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^ CATiA^jiJ JcJl 






Copyright, 1884, 
By JAMES PARTON. 



Copyright, 1896, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



PREFACE. 



In this volume are presented examples of men 
who shed lustre upon ordinary pursuits, either by 
the superior manner in which they exercised them 
or by the noble use they made of the leisure which 
success in them usually gives. Such men are the 
nobility of republics. The American people were 
fortunate in having at an early period an ideal 
man of this kind in Benjamin Franklin, who, at 
the age of forty-two, just mid-way in his life, de- 
liberately relinquished the most profitable business 
of its kind in the colonies for the sole purpose of 
developing electrical science. In this, as in other 
respects, his example has had great influence with 
his countrymen. 

A distinguished author, who lived some years at 
JSTewport, has expressed the opinion that the men 
who occupy the villas of that emerald isle exert 
very little power compared with that of an orator 
or a writer. To be, he adds, at the head of a nor- 
mal school, or to be a professor in a college, is to 



IV PREFACE. 

have a sway over the destinies of America which 
reduces to nothingness the power of successful men 
of business. 

Being myself a member of the fraternity of writ- 
ers, I suppose I ought to yield a joyful assent to 
such remarks. It is flattering to the seK-love of 
those who drive along Bellevue Avenue in a shabby 
hired vehicle to be told that they are personages of 
much more consequence than the heavy capitalist 
who swings by in a resplendent curricle, drawn by 
two matched and matchless steeds, in a six-hun- 
dred dollar harness. Perhaps they are. But I ad- 
vise young men who aspire to serve their genera- 
tion effectively not to undervalue the importance 
of the gentleman in the curricle. 

One of the individuals who has figured lately 
in the society of Newport is the proprietor of an 
important newspaper. He is not a writer, nor a 
teacher in a normal school, but he wields a con- 
siderable power in this country. Fifty men write 
for the journal which he conducts, some of whom 
write to admiration, for they are animated by a 
humane and patriotic spirit. The late lamented 
Ivory Chamberlain was a writer whose leading edi- 
torials were of national value. But, mark : a tele- 
gram of ten words from that young man at New- 
port, written with perspiring hand in a pause of 
the game of polo, determines without appeal the 



PREFACE. V 

course of the paper in any crisis of business or 
politics. 

I do not complain of this arrangement of things. 
I think it is just ; I know it is unalterable. 

It is then of the greatest possible importance 
that the men who control during tKeir lifetime, and 
create endowments when they are dead, should 
share the best civilization of their age and country. 
It is also of the greatest importance that young 
men whom nature has fitted to be leaders should, 
at the beginning of life, take to the steep and 
thorny path which leads at length to mastership. 

Most of these chapters were published originally 
in "The Ledger " of New York, and a few of them 
in " The Youths' Companion " of Boston, the largest 
two circulations in the country. I have occasion- 
ally had reason to think that they were of some 
service to young readers, and I may add that they 
represent more labor and research than would be 
naturally supposed from their brevity. Perhaps in 
this new form they may reach and influence the 
minds of future leaders in the great and growing 
realm of business. I should pity any young man 
who could read the briefest account of what has 
been done in manufacturing towns by such men as 
John Smedley and Robert Owen without forming 
a secret resolve to do something similar if ever he 
should win the opportunity. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Biographical Sketch of James Parton ... ix 

David Matdole, Hammer-Maker 9 

IcHABOB Washburn, Wire-Maker . , . . 18 

Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith . . 27 

Michael Reynolds, Engine-Driver ... 36 

Major Egbert Pike, Farmer 43 

George Graham, Clock-Maker, buried in Westmin- 
ster Abbey. 51 

John Harrison, Exquisite Watch-Maker ... 58 

Peter Faneuil, and the Great Hall he built . 65 

Chauncey Jerome, Yankee Clock-Maker ... 79 

Captain Pierre Laclede Liguest, Pioneer . . 89 

Israel Putnam, Farmer 96 

George Flower, Pioneer 104 

Edward Coles, Noblest of the Pioneers, and his 

Great Speech 117 

Peter H. Burnett, Banker 126 

Gerrit Smith 133 

Peter Force, Printer 140 

John Bromfield, Merchant 148 

Frederick Tudor, Ice Exporter . . . . 156 
Myron Holley, Market-Gardener . . . .163 

The Founders of Lowell 170 

Robert Owen, Cotton-Manufacturer .... 180 

John Smedley, Stocking-Manufacturer . . . 188 
Richard Cobden, Calico Printer . . . .195 

Henry Bessemer 206 

John Bright, Manufacturer 212 

Thomas Edward, Cobbler and Naturalist . . 224 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Robert Dick, Baker and Naturalist 
John Duncan, Weaver and Botanist 
James Lackington, Second-Hand Bookseller . 

Horace Greeley's Start 

James Gordon Bennett, and how he pounded his 

" Herald "...*. 

Three John Walters, and their Newspaper 

George Hope 

Sir Henry Cole 

Charles Summers 

William B. Astor, House-Owner 

Peter Cooper 

Paris-Duverney, French Financier . 

Sir Rowland Hill ...... 

Makie-Antoine Careme, French Cook 
Wonderful Walker, Parson of all Work 
Sir Christopher Wren . . . . , 

Sir John Rennie, Engineer .... 

Sir Moses Montepiore ..... 

Marquis op Worcester, Inventor of the Steam- 

Engine 

An Old Dry-Goods Merchant's Recollections 



PAGE 

232 
240 

247 
254 

264 
275 



342 
349 
355 
363- 
372 
379 

385 
392 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF JAMES PARTON. 

There is so much of America in the spirit and 
themes of James Parton's writing that one does not 
naturally think of him as English born. Canterbury 
in England, however, was the place, and February 9, 
1822, the day of his birth. Doctor Johnson spoke 
of the advantages of catching a Scotchman early 
enough ; and as Parton was brought to America 
when he was only five years old, he may certainly 
be claimed as one of our countrymen. Only once, 
when he was more than forty years old, did he 
return to England for a visit. 

A part of his early education was picked up in 
New York public schools, where, if we may judge 
by the sketch of Joseph Lancaster in the second 
series of " Captains of Industry," the learning of 
anything useful must have been a difficult feat ; 
the rest of his schooling he had at White Plains, 
N. Y. Probably he learned more in the few years 
that followed his school days, as many have done 
by changing their pupil's seat for that of teacher. 
For several years he taught in New York and Phil- 
adelphia. By degrees he became at this time so 
regular a contributor to the New York " Home 
Journal " that he soon found himself one of its edi- 
torial corps. 



X BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

The " Home Journal " of the forties and fifties 
with the conspicuous N. P. Willis as its chief edi- 
tor, held a place, which in our present world of let- 
ters has no exact counterpart. The favorite writers 
of the day, most of them jnen and women whose 
very names have now a sound like that of an old- 
fashioned song, were upon its staff, and provided a 
large number of readers with fiction, fact and verse 
treated in a way which has become almost equally 
obsolete. Yet this was the popular literature of 
its time, and Mr. Parton did well his share in pro- 
ducing it. It is not without significance that in 
his later days he was one of the regular writers for 
" The Youth's Companion." 

The kind of work in which he achieved his great- 
est success, the writing of biography, bore its first 
fruits in " The Life of Horace Greeley," which he 
published in 1855. His connection with the " Home 
Journal " lasted but three years. At about the end 
of this time he happened to remark to a New York 
publisher that a life of Greeley would be an inter- 
esting book. " Why don't you write it ? " asked his 
friend the publisher. Mr. Parton explained that 
it would demand an expensive journey and a year 
of study, neither of which he could afford. The 
publisher believed in the man and his plan, and 
advanced the necessary means. Accordingly Mr. 
Parton spent much time in New Hampshire and 
Vermont, writing down from the spoken words of 
Greeley's old neighbors every fact and story that 
bore upon his subject. Of Greeley's life in the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. xi 

larger world he made such study as his own resi- 
dence in New York and the careful scrutiny of the 
files of many periodicals, especially the " Tribune," 
rendered possible. The book had so large a sale 
that he determined at once to follow the profes- 
sion of authorship. 

The dedication of the life of Greeley reads thus : 
" To the Young Men of the Free States, this volume 
is respectfully dedicated by one of their number." 
And when he was no longer a young man, Mr. 
Parton was still writing with the same audience 
in view. " Captains of Industry " is eminently a 
work for this class of readers ; and the two vol- 
umes of which it is made up were printed so late 
as in 1884 and 1891. His lives of Aaron Burr 
(1857), Andrew Jackson (1859-60), Benjamin 
Franklin (1864) and Thomas JefPerson (1874), 
his " Famous Americans of Recent Times " 
(1867), "Smoking and Drinking" (1868), are all 
books in which young men would naturally feel a 
special interest. 

His pen was constantly active. We would not 
give here a complete catalogue of his works ; but 
his book on General Butler at New Orleans (1863), 
where Mr. Parton was with him in the war, 
and his "Life of Voltaire" (1881), the result of 
many years' labor and reading on a subject which 
especially appealed to him, must at least be men- 
tioned. So, too, must his second published work, 
a collection of " The Humorous Poetry of the Eng- 
lish Language, from Chaucer to Saxe " (1856), 



xu BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

and a later book " Caricature and other Comic Art 
in all Times and many Lands " (1877), since both 
give evidence of an appreciation of humor, which 
to historian, biographer or the merest private citi- 
zen, is a gift upon which too high a value can 
hardly be placed. 

The life, aside from the written work of such a 
man as Mr. Parton, is not a life of picturesque 
detail. There is little to be said of it except that 
New York was his home up to 1875 when he re- 
moved himself to Newburyport, Mass. His first 
wife, " Fanny Fern," a sister of N. P. Willis, her- 
self a writer of considerable popularity, had died 
in 1872, and in 1876 Mr. Parton married the 
daughter of " Fanny Fern " and her first hus- 
band. 

It is pleasant to read the account a NewburyjDort 
neighbor and friend has given of the latter portion 
of Mr. Parton's life. He is found living in an old 
New England house, identifying himself with the 
best life of his town, in close sympathy with the 
children of his own household and their little 
friends, entering into their games and pleasures 
with a zest like their own, in work and play stand- 
ing firmly and always for what was without fraud 
and ugliness, hidden or seen. His beliefs were 
different from those which most of his townsmen 
held, but when he died in Newburyport, October 
17, 1891, men of all opinions had but one in real- 
izing how valuable a work had been ended by Mr. 
Parton's death. 



CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 



DAVID MAYDOLE, 

HAMMEE-MAKEE. 



When a young man begins to think of making 
his fortune, his first notion usually is to go away 
from home to some very distant place. At present, 
the favorite spot is Colorado ; awhile ago it was 
California ; and old men remember when Buffalo 
was about as far west as the most enterprising per- 
son thought of venturing. 

It is not always a foolish thing to go out into 
the world far beyond the parent nest, as the young 
birds do in midsummer. But I can tell you, boys, 
from actual inquiry, that a great number of the 
most important and famous business men of the 
United States struck down roots where they were 
first planted, and where no one supposed there was 
room or chance for any large thing to grow. 

I will tell you a story of one of these men, as 
I heard it from his own lips some time ago, in a 
beautiful village where I lectured. 



10 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

He was an old man then ; and a curious thing 
about him was that, although he was too deaf to 
hear one word of a public address, even of the 
loudest speaker, he not only attended church every 
Sunday, but was rarely absent when a lecture was 
delivered. 

While I was performing on that occasion, I saw 
him sitting just in front of the platform, sleeping 
the sleep of the just till the last word was uttered. 

Upon being introduced to this old gentleman in 
his office, and learning that his business was to 
make hammers, I was at a loss for a subject of con- 
versation, as it never occurred to me that there was 
anything to be said about hammers. 

I have generally possessed a hammer, and fre- 
quently inflicted damage on my fingers therewith, 
but I had supposed that a hammer was simply a 
hammer, and that hammers were very much alike. 
At last I said, — 

" And here you make hammers for mankind, Mr. 
Maydole?" 

You may have noticed the name of David May- 
dole upon hammers. He is the man. 

" Yes," said he, " I have made hammers here for 
twenty-eight years." 

" Well, then," said I, shouting in his best ear, " by 
this time you ought to be able to make a pretty good 
hammer." 

" No, I can't," was his reply. " I can't make a 
pretty good hammer. I make the best hammer 
that 's made." 



DAVID MAYDOLE. 11 

That was strong language. I thought, at first, 
he meant it as a joke ; but I soon found it was no 
joke at all. 

He had made hammers the study of his life- 
time, and, after many years of thoughtful and 
laborious experiment, he had actually produced an 
article, to which, with all his knowledge and expe- 
rience, he could suggest no improvement. 

I was astonished to discover how many points 
there are about an instrument which I had always 
supposed a very simple thing. I was surprised to 
learn in how many ways a hammer can be bad. 

But, first, let me tell you how he came to think 
of hammers. 

There he was, forty years ago, in a small village 
of the State of New York ; no railroad yet, and 
even the Erie Canal many miles distant. He was 
the village blacksmith, his establishment consisting 
of himself and a boy to blow the bellows. 

He was a good deal troubled with his hammers. 
Sometimes the heads would fly off. If the metal 
was too soft, the hammer would spread out and 
wear away; if it was too hard, it would split. 

At that time blacksmiths made their own ham- 
mers, and he knew very little about mixing ores so 
as to produce the toughest iron. But he was par- 
ticularly troubled with the hammer getting off the 
handle, a mishap which could be dangerous as well 
as inconvenient. 

At this point of his narrative the old gentleman 



12 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

showed a number of old hammers, such as were in 
use before he began to improve the instrument; 
and it was plain that men had tried very hard 
before him to overcome this difficulty. 

One hammer had an iron rod running down 
through the handle with a nut screwed on at the 
end. Another was wholly composed of iron, the 
head and handle being all of one piece. There 
were various other devices, some of which were ex- 
ceedingly clumsy and awkward. 

At last, he hit upon an improvement which led 
to his being able to put a hammer upon a handle in 
such a way that it would stay there. He made 
what is called an adze-handled hammer, the head 
being attached to the handle after the manner of 
an adze. 

The improvement consists in merely making a 
longer hole for the handle to go into, by which de- 
vice it has a much firmer hold of the head, and can 
easily be made extremely tight. 

With this improvement, if the handle is well sea- 
soned and well wedged, there is no danger of the 
head flying off. He made some other changes, all 
of them merely for his own convenience, without a 
thought of going into the manufacture of hammers. 

The neighborhood in which he lived would have 
scarcely required half a dozen new hammers per 
annum. But one day there came to the village six 
carpenters to work upon a new church, and one of 
these men, having left his hammer at home, came 



DAVID MAYDOLE. 13 

to David Mayclole's blacksmitli's sliop to get one 
made. 

"Make me as good a hammer," said the car- 
penter, " as you know how." 

That was touching David upon a tender place. 

" As good a one as I know how ? " said he. 
" But perhaps you don't want to pay for as good a 
one as I know how to make." 

" Yes, I do," replied the man ; " I want a good 
hammer." 

The blacksmith made him one of his best. It 
was probably the best hammer that had ever been 
made in the world, since it contained two or three 
important improvements never before combined in 
the instrument. 

The carpenter was delighted with it, and showed 
it, with a good deal of exidtation, to his five com- 
panions ; every man of whom came the next day to 
the shop and wanted one just like it. They did not 
understand all the blacksmith's notions about tem- 
pering and mixing the metals, but they saw at a 
glance that the head and the handle were so united 
that there never was likely to be any divorce be- 
tween them. 

To a carpenter building a wooden house, the 
mere removal of that one defect was a boon beyond 
price ; he could hammer away with confidence, and 
without fear of seeing the head of his hammer leap 
into the next field, unless stopped by a comrade's 
head. 



14 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

When all the six carpenters had been supplied 
with these improved hammers, the contractor came 
and ordered two more. He seemed to think, and, 
in fact, said as much, that the blacksmith ought to 
make his hammers a little better than those he had 
made for the men. 

" I can't make any better ones," said honest 
David. " When I make a thing, I make it as well 
as I can, no matter who it 's for." 

Soon after, the store-keeper of the village, see- 
ing what excellent hammers these were, gave the 
blacksmith a magnificent order for two dozen, 
which, in due time, were placed upon his counter 
for sale. 

At this time something happened to David May- 
dole which may fairly be called good luck ; and you 
will generally notice events of the kind in the lives 
of meritorious men. " Fortune favors the brave," 
is an old saying, and good luck in business is very 
apt to befall the man who could do very well with- 
out it. 

It so happened that a New York dealer in tools, 
named Wood, whose store is still kept in Chatham 
Street, New York, happened to be in the village 
getting orders for tools. As soon as his eye fell 
upon those hammers, he saw their merits, and 
bought them all. He did more. He left a stand- 
ing order for as many hammers of that kind as 
David May dole could make. 

That was the beginning. The young blacksmith 



DAVID MAYDOLE. 15 

hired a man or two, then more men, and made 
more hammers, and kept on making hammers dur- 
ing the whole of his active life, employing at last a 
hundred and fifteen men. 

During the first twenty years, he was frequently 
experimenting with a view to improve the hammer. 
He discovered just the best combination of ores to 
make his hammers hard enough, without being too 
hard. 

He gradually found out precisely the best form 
of every part. There is not a turn or curve about 
either the handle or the head which has not been 
patiently considered, and reconsidered, and consid- 
ered again, until no further improvement seemed 
possible. Every handle is seasoned three years, or 
until there is no shrink left in it. 

Perhaps the most important discovery which he 
made was that a perfect tool cannot be made by 
machinery. 

Naturally, his first thought, when he found his 
business increasing, was to apply machinery to the 
manufacture, and for some years several parts of 
the process were thus performed. Gradually, his 
machines were discarded, and for many years be- 
fore his retirement, every portion of the work was 
done by hand. 

Each hammer is hammered out from a piece of 
iron, and is tempered over a slow charcoal fire, 
under the inspection of an experienced man. He 
looks as though, he were cooking his hammers on a 



16 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

charcoal furnace, and he watches them until the 
process is complete, as a cook watches mutton 
chops. 

I heard some curious things about the manage- 
ment of this business. The founder never did any- 
thing to " push " it. He never advertised. He 
never reduced the price of his hammers because 
other manufacturers were doing so. 

His only care, he said, had been to make a per- 
fect hammer, to make just as many of them as peo- 
ple wanted, and no more, and to sell them at a fair 
price. If people did not want his hammers, he did 
not want to make them. If they did not want to 
pay what they were worth, they were welcome to 
buy cheaper ones of some one else. 

For his own part, his wants were few, and he was 
ready at any time to go back to his blacksmith's 
shop. 

The old gentleman concluded his interesting nar- 
ration by making me a present of one of his ham- 
mers, which I now cherish among my treasures. 

If it had been a picture, I should have had it 
framed and hung up over my desk, a perpetual ad- 
monition to me to do my work well ; not too fast ; 
not too much of it ; not with any showy false pol- 
ish; not letting anything go till I had done all I 
could to make it what it should be. 

In telling this little story, I have told thousands 
of stories. Take the word hammer out of it, and 
put glue in its place, and you have the history of 



DAVID MAYDOLE. 17 

Peter Cooper. By putting in other words, you can 
make the true history of every great business in the 
world which has lasted thirty years. 

The true " protective system," of which we hear 
so much, is to make the best article ; and he who 
does this need not buy a ticket for Colorado. 



ICHABOD ' WASHBUKN, 

WIRE-MAKEE. 



Op all our manufactures few have had a more 
rapid development than wire-making. During the 
last thirty years the world has been girdled by tel- 
egraphic wires and cables, requiring an immense 
and continuous supply of the article. In New York 
alone two hundred pianos a week have been made, 
each containing miles of wire. There have been 
years during which a garment composed chiefly of 
wire was worn by nearly every woman in the land, 
even by the remotest and poorest. 

Who has supplied all these millions of miles of 
wire ? A large part of the answer to this question 
is given when we pronounce the name at the head 
of this article, Ichabod Washburn. In the last 
years of his life he had seven hundred men at 
Worcester making wire, the product of whose labor 
was increased a hundred fold by machinery which 
he had invented or adapted. 

It is curious to note how he seemed to stumble 
into the business just in the nick of time. I say, 
seemed; but, in truth, he had been prepared for 



ICHABOD WASHBURN. 19 

success in it by a long course of experience and 
training. He was a poor widow's son, born on 
the coast of Massachusetts, a few miles from Plym- 
outh Rock ; his father having died in early man- 
hood, when this boy and a twin brother were two 
months old. His mother, suddenly left with three 
little children, and having no property except the 
house in which she lived, supported her family by 
weaving, in which her children from a very early 
age could give her some help. She kept them at 
school, however, during part of the winter, and in- 
stilled into their minds good principles. When 
this boy was nine years of age she was obliged, as 
the saying was, " to put him out to live " to a mas- 
ter five miles from her house. 

On his way to his new home he was made to feel 
the difference between a hard master and a kind 
mother. Having a quick intelligent mind, he ques- 
tioned the man concerning the objects they passed. 
At length the boy saw a windmill, and he asked 
what that was. 

" Don't ask me so many questions, boy," an- 
swered the man, in a harsh, rough voice. 

The little fellow was silenced, and he vividly re- 
membered the event, the tone, and the scene, to old 
age. His employer was a maker of harness, car- 
riages, and trunks, and it was the boy's business to 
take care of a horse and two cows, light fires, chop 
wood, ran errands, and work in the shop. He 
never forgot the cold winter mornings, and the loud 



20 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

voice of his master rousing him from sleep to make 
the fire, and go out to the barn and get the milk- 
ing done before daylight. His sleeping-place was 
a loft above the shop reached by a ladder. Being 
always a timid boy, he suffered extremely from fear 
in the dark and lonely garret of a building where 
no one else slept, and to which he had to grope his 
way alone. 

What would the dainty boys of the present time 
think of going to mill on a frosty morning astride 
of a bag of corn on the horse's back, without stock- 
ings or shoes and with trousers half way up to the 
knees ? On one occasion the little Ichabod was so 
thoroughly chilled that he had to stop at a house tb 
get warm, and the good woman took pity on him, 
made him put on a pair of long black stockings, 
and a pair of her own shoes. Thus equipped, with 
his long black legs extending far out of his short 
trousers, and the woman's shoes lashed to his feet, 
he presented a highly ludicrous appearance, and 
one which, he thought, might have conveyed a val- 
uable hint to his master. In the daytime he was 
usually employed in the shop making harnesses, a 
business in which he became expert. He served 
this man five years, or until he was fourteen years 
of age, when he made a complete harness for one 
of his cousins, which rendered excellent service for 
many years, and a part of it lasted almost as long 
as the maker. 

Thus, at fourteen, he had completed his first ap 



ICHABOD WASHBURN. 21 

prenticeship, and had learned his first trade. The 
War of 1812 having given a sudden start to manu- 
factures in tliis country, he went to work in a cot- 
ton factory for a while, where, for the first time in 
his life, he saw complicated machinery. Like a 
true Yankee as he was, he was strongly attracted 
by it, and proposed to learn the machinist's trade. 
His guardian opposed the scheme strongly, on the 
ground that, in all probability, by the time he had 
learned the trade the country would be so full of 
factories that there would be no more machinery 
required. 

Thus discouraged, he did the next best thing : 
he went apprentice to the blacksmith's trade, near 
Worcester, where he was destined to spend the rest 
of his life. He was sixteen years of age when he 
began this second apprenticeship ; but he was still 
one of the most timid and bashful of lads. In a 
fragment of autobiography found among his pa- 
pers after his death he says : — 

"I arrived at Worcester about one o'clock, at 
Syke's tavern where we were to dine ; but the sight 
of the long table in the dining-room so overpowered 
my bashful spirit that I left the room and went 
into the yard without dinner to wait till the stage 
was ready." 

On reaching his new home, eighty miles from 
his mother's house, he was so overcome by home- 
sickness that, the first night, he sobbed himself to 
sleep. Soon he became interested in his shop and in 



22 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

his work, made rapid progress, and approved him- 
self a skillful hand. Having been brought up to go 
to church every Sunday, he now hired a seat in the 
gallery of one of the churches at fifty cents a year, 
which he earned in over-time by forging pot-hooks. 
Every cent of his spending money was earned in 
similar ways. Once he made six toasting - irons, 
and carried them to Worcester, where he sold them 
for a dollar and a quarter each, taking a book in 
part payment. When his sister was married he 
made her a wedding present of a toasting - iron. 
Nor was it an easy matter for an apprentice then 
to do work in over-time, for he was expected to 
labor in his master's service from sunrise to sunset 
in the summer, and from sunrise to nine o'clock in 
the winter. 

On a bright day in August, 1818, his twentieth 
birthday, he was out of his time, and, according to 
the custom of the period, he celebrated the joyful 
event by a game of ball ! In a few months, having 
saved a little money, he went into business as a 
manufacturer of ploughs, in which he had some lit- 
tle success. But still yearning to know more of ma- 
chinery he entered upon what we may call his third 
apprenticeship, in an armory near Worcester, where 
he soon acquired skill enough to do the finer parts 
of the work. Then he engaged in the manufac- 
ture of lead pipe, in which he attained a moderate 
success. 

At length, in 1831, being then thirty-three years 



ICHABOD WASHBURN. 23 

old, he began the business of making wire, in which 
he continued during the remainder of his active 
life. The making of wire, especially the finer and 
better kinds, is a nice operation. Until Ichabod 
Washburn entered into the business, wire of good 
quality was not made in the United States ; and 
there was only one house in Great Britain that had 
the secret of making the steel wire for pianos, and 
they had had a monopoly of the manufacture for 
about eighty years. 

Wire is made by drawing a rod of soft, hot iron 
through a hole which is too small for it. If a still 
smaller sized wire is desired, it is drawn through 
a smaller hole, and this process is repeated until 
the required size is attained. Considerable power 
is needed to draw the wire through, and the hole 
through which it is drawn is soon worn larger. 
The first wire machine that Washburn ever saw 
was arranged with a pair of self - acting pincers 
which drew a foot of wire and then had to let go 
and take a fresh hold. By this machine a man 
could make fifty pounds of coarse wire in a day. 
He soon improved this machine so that the pincers 
drew fifteen feet without letting go ; and by this 
improvement alone the product of one man's la- 
bor was increased about eleven times. A good 
workman could make five or six hundred pounds a 
day by it. By another improvement which Wash- 
burn adopted the product was increased to twenty- 
five hundred pounds a day. 



24 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

He was now in his element. He always had a 
partner to manage the counting-room part of the 
business, which he disliked. 

" I never," said he, " had taste or inclination for 
it, always preferring to' be among the machinery, 
doing the work and handling the tools I was used 
to, though oftentimes at the expense of a smutty 
face and greasy hands." 

His masterpiece in the way of invention was his 
machinery for making steel wire for pianos, — a 
branch of the business which was urged upon him 
by the late Jonas Chickering, piano manufacturer, 
of Boston. The most careless glance at the strings 
of a piano shows us that the wire must be exquis- 
itely tempered and most thoroughly wrought, in 
order to remain in tune, subjected as they are to a 
steady pull of many tons. Washburn experimented 
for years in perfecting his process, and he was 
never satisfied until he was able to produce a wire 
which he could honestly claim to be the best in the 
world. He had amazing success in his business. 
At one time he was making two hundred and fifty 
thousand yards of crinoline wire every day. His 
whole daily product was seven tons of iron wire, 
and five tons of steel wire. 

This excellent man, in the midst of a success 
which would have dazzled and corrupted some men, 
retained all the simplicity, the modesty, and the 
generosity of his character. He felt, as he said, no- 
where so much at home as among his own machiu' 



ICHABOD WASHBURN. 25 

ery, surrounded by thoughtful mechanics, dressed 
like them for work, and possibly with a black 
smudge upon his face. In his person, however, he 
was scrupulously clean and nice, a hater of tobacco 
and all other polluting things and lowering influ- 
ences. 

Rev. H. T. Cheever, the editor of his "Memo- 
rials," mentions also that he remained to the end 
of his life in the warmest sympathy with the natu- 
ral desires of the workingman. He was a collector 
of facts concerning the condition of workingmen 
everywhere, and for many years cherished a project 
of making his own business a cooperative one. 

" He believed," remarks Mr. Cheever, " that the 
skilled and faithful manual worker, as well as the 
employer, was entitled to a participation in the net 
proceeds of business, over and above his actual 
wages. He held that in this country the entire 
people are one great working class, working with 
brains, or hands, or both, who should therefore act 
in harmony — the brain - workers and the hand- 
workers — for the equal rights of all, without dis- 
tinction of color, condition, or religion. Holding 
that capital is accumulated labor, and wealth the 
creation of capital and labor combined, he thought 
it to be the wise policy of the large capitalists and 
corporations to help in the process of elevating and 
advancing labor by a proffered interest." 

These were the opinions of a man who had had 
long experience in all the grades, from half-frozen 
apprentice to millionaire manufacturer. 



26 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

He died in 1868, aged seventy-one years, leaving 
an immense estate ; whicli, however, chiefly con- 
sisted in his wire-manufactory. He had made it a 
principle not to accumulate money for the sake of 
money, and he gave away in his lifetime a large 
•portion of his revenue every year. He bequeathed 
to charitable associations the sum of four hundred 
and twenty-four thousand dollars, which was dis- 
tributed among twenty-one objects. His great be- 
quests were to institutions of practical and homely 
benevolence: to the Home for Aged Women and 
Widows, one hundred thousand dollars ; to found 
a hospital and free dispensary, the same amount ; 
smaller sums to industrial schools and mission 
schools. 

It was one of his fixed convictions that boys can- 
not be properly fitted for life without being both 
taught and required to use their hands, as well as 
their heads, and it was long his intention to found 
some kind of industrial college. Finding that 
something of the kind was already in existence at 
Worcester, he made a bequest to it of one hundred 
and ten thousand dollars. The institution is called 
the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial 
Science. 



ELIHU BURRITT, 

THE LEAKNED BLACKSMITH. 



Elihu Buemtt, with, whom we have all been 
familiar for many years as the Learned Blacksmith, 
was born in 1810 at the beautiful town of New 
Britain, in Connecticut, about ten miles from Hart- 
ford. He was the youngest son in an old-fashioned 
family of ten children. His father owned and cul- 
tivated a small farm ; but spent the winters at the 
shoemaker's bench, according to the rational custom 
of Connecticut in that day. When Elihu was six- 
teen years of age, his father died and the lad soon 
after apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in his 
native village. 

He was an ardent reader of books from childhood 
up ; and he was enabled to gratify this taste by 
means of a small village library, which contained 
several books of history, of which he was naturally 
fond. This boy, however, was a shy, devoted stu- 
dent, brave to maintain what he thought right, but 
so bashful that he was known to hide in the cellar 
when his parents were going to have company. 

As his father's long sickness had kept him out of 



28 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

school for some time, lie was the more earnest to 
learn during his apprenticeship ; particularly math- 
ematics, since he desired to become, among other 
things, a good surveyor,. He was obliged to work 
from ten to twelve hours a day at the forge ; but 
while he was blowing the bellows he employed his 
mind in doing sums in his head. His biographer 
gives a specimen of these calculations which he 
wrought out without making a single figure : — 

" How many yards of cloth, three feet in width, 
cut into strips an inch wide, and allowing half an 
inch at each end for the lap, would it require to 
reach from the centre of the earth to the surface, 
and how much would it all cost at a shilling a 
yard ? " 

He would go home at night with several of these 
sums done in his head, and report the results to 
an elder brother who had worked his way through 
Williams College. His brother would perform the 
calculations upon a slate, and usually found his 
answers correct. 

When he was about half through his apprentice- 
ship he suddenly took it into his head to learn 
Latin, and began at once through the assistance of 
the same elder brother. In the evenings of one 
winter he read the ^neid of Virgil ; and, after 
going on for a while with Cicero and a few other 
Latin authors, he began Greek. During the win- 
ter months he was obliged to spend every hour of 
daylight at the forge, and even in the summer his 



ELIHU BURRITT. 29 

leisure minutes were few and far between. But he 
carried his Greek grammar in his hat, and often 
found a chance, while he was waiting for a large 
piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his 
black fingers, and go through a pronoun, an adjec- 
tive or part of a verb, without being noticed by his 
fellow-apprentices. 

So he worked his way until he was out of his 
time, when he treated himself to a whole quarter's 
schooling at his brother's school, where he studied 
mathematics, Latin and other languages. Then he 
went back to the forge, studying hard in the even- 
ings at the same branches, until he had saved 
a little money; when he resolved to go to New 
Haven, and spend a winter in study. It was far 
from his thoughts, as it was from his means, to 
enter Yale College ; but he seems to have had an 
idea that the very atmosphere of the college would 
assist him. He was still so timid that he deter- 
mined to work his way without asking the least as- 
sistance from a professor or tutor. 

He took lodgings at a cheap tavern in New 
Haven, and began the very next morning a course 
of heroic study. As soon as the fire was made in 
the sitting-room of the inn, which was at half -past 
four in the morning, he took possession, and studied 
German until breakfast-time, which was half-past 
seven. When the other boarders had gone to busi- 
ness, he sat down to Homer's Iliad, of which he 
knew nothing, and with only a dictionary to help 
him. 



30 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

"The proudest moment of my life," he once 
wrote, "was when I had first gained the full mean- 
ing of the first fifteen lines of that noble work. I 
took a short triumphal walk in favor of that ex- 
ploit." 

Just before the boarders came back for their 
dinner, he put away all his Greek and Latin books, 
and took up a work in Italian, because it was less 
likely to attract the notice of the noisy crowd. Af- 
ter dumer he fell again upon his Greek, and in the 
evening read Spanish until bed-time. In this way 
he lived and labored for three months, a solitary 
student in the midst of a community of students ; 
his mind imbued with the gTandeurs and dignity of 
the past, while eating flapjacks and molasses at a 
poor tavern. 

Returning to his home in New Britain, he ob- 
tained the mastership of an academy in a town near 
by : but he could not bear a life wholly sedentary ; 
and, at the end of a year, abandoned his school and 
became what is called a " runner " for one of the 
manufacturers of New Britain. This business he 
pursued until he was about twenty-five years of 
age, when, tired of wandering, he came home again, 
and set up a grocery and provision store, in which 
he invested all the money he had saved. Soon 
came the commercial crash of 1837, and he was in- 
volved in the widespread ruin. He lost the whole 
of his capital, and had to begin the world anew. 

He resolved to return to his studies in the Ian? 



ELTHU BURRITT. 31 

guages of the East. Unable to buy or find the 
necessary books, he tied up his effects in a small 
handkerchief, and walked to Boston, one hundred 
miles distant, hoping there to find a ship in which 
he could work his passage across the ocean, and 
collect oriental works from port to port. He could 
not find a berth. He turned back, and walked as 
far as Worcester, where he found work, and found 
something else which he liked better. There is an 
Antiquarian Society at Worcester, with a large 
and peculiar library, containing a great number of 
books in languages not usually studied, such as 
the Icelandic, the Russian, the Celtic dialects, and 
others. The directors of the Society placed all 
their treasures at his command, and he now di- 
\dded his time between hard study of languages 
and hard labor at the forge. To show how he 
passed his days, I will copy an entry or two from 
a private diary he then kept : — 

" Monday, June 18. Headache ; 40 pages Cu- 
vier's Theory of the Earth ; 64 pages French ; 11 
hours forging. 

" Tuesday, June 19. 60 lines Hebrew ; 30 pages 
French ; 10 pages of Cuvier ; 8 lines Syriac ; 10 
lines Danish ; 10 lines Bohemian ; 9 lines Polish ; 
15 names of stars ; 10 hours forging. 

"Wednesday, June 20. 25 lines Hebrew; 8 
lines Syriac ; 11 hours forging." 

He spent five years at Worcester in such labors 
as these. When work at his trade became slack, 



32 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

or when he had earned a little more money than 
usual, he would spend more time in the library ; 
but, on the other hand, when work in the shop was 
pressing, he could give less time to study. After a 
while, he began to think that he might perhaps 
earn his subsistence in part by his knowledge of 
languages, and thus save much waste of time and 
vitality at the forge. He wrote a letter to William 
Lincoln, of Worcester, who had aided and en- 
couraged him ; and in this letter he gave a short 
history of his life, and asked whether he could not 
find employment in translating some foreign work 
into English. Mr. Lincoln was so much struck 
with his letter that he sent it to Edward Everett, 
and he having occasion soon after to address a con- 
vention of teachers, read it to his audience as a 
wonderful instance of the pursuit of knowledge 
under difficulties. Mr. Everett prefaced it by say- 
ing that such a resolute purpose of improvement 
against such obstacles excited his admiration, and 
even his veneration. 

" It is enough," he added, " to make one who 
has good opportunities for education hang his head 
in shame." 

All this, including the whole of the letter, was 
published in the newspapers, with eulogistic com- 
ments, in which the student was spoken of as the 
Learned Blacksmith. The bashful scholar was 
overwhelmed with shame at finding himself sud- 
denly famous. However, it led to his entering 



ELIHU BURRITT. 33 

upon public life. Lecturing was then coming into 
vogue, and he was frequently invited to the plat- 
form. Accordingly, he wrote a lecture, entitled 
" Application and Genius," in which he endeavored 
to show that there is no such thing as genius, but 
that all extraordinary attainments are the results 
of application. After delivering this lecture sixty 
times in one season, he went back to his forge at 
Worcester, mingling study with labor in the old 
way. 

On sitting down to write a new lecture for the 
following season, on the " Anatomy of the Earth," 
a certain impression was made upon his mind, 
which changed the current of his life. Studying 
the globe, he was impressed with the need that one 
nation has of other nations, and one zone of another 
zone ; the tropics producing what assuages life in 
the northern latitudes, and northern lands furnish- 
ing the means of mitigating tropical discomforts. 
He felt that the earth was made for friendliness 
and cooperation, not for fierce competition and 
bloody wars. 

Under the influence of these feelings, his lecture 
became an eloquent- plea for peace, and to this ob- 
ject his after life was chiefly devoted. The dispute 
with England upon the Oregon boundary induced 
him to go to England, with the design of traveling 
on foot from village to village, preaching peace, 
and exposing the horrors and folly of war. His 
addresses attracting attention, he was invited to 



34 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

speak to larger bodies, and, in short, he spent 
twenty years of his life as a lecturer upon peace, 
organizing Peace Congresses, advocating low uni- 
form rates of ocean postage, and spreading abroad 
among the people of Europe the feeling which is- 
sued, at length, in the arbitration of the dispute 
between the United States and Great Britain ; an 
event which posterity will, perhaps, consider the 
most important of this century. He heard Victor 
Hugo say at the Paris Congress of 1850 : — 

" A day will come when a cannon will be ex^ 
hibited in public museums, just as an instrument 
of torture is now, and people will be amazed that 
such a thing could ever have been." 

If he had sympathetic hearers, he produced upon 
them extraordinary effects. Nathaniel P. Rogers, 
one of the heroes of the Anti-slavery agitation, 
chanced to hear him in Boston in 1845 on his fa- 
vorite subject of Peace. He wrote soon after : — 

" I had been introduced to Elihu Burritt the day 
before, and was much interested in hi? original ap- 
pearance, and desirous of knowing him further. I 
had not formed the highest opinion of his liber- 
ality. But on entering the hall my friends and I 
soon forgot everything but the speaker. The dim- 
lit hall, the handful audience, the contrast of both 
with the illuminated chapel and ocean multitude 
assembled overhead, bespeak painfully the estima- 
tion in which the great cause of peace is held in 
Christendom. I wish all Christendom could have 



ELIHU BURRITT. 35 

heard Elihu Burritt's speech. One unbroken, un- 
abated stream it was of profound and lofty and 
original eloquence. I felt riveted to my seat till 
lie finished it. There was no oratory about it, in 
the ordinary sense of that word ; no graces of elo- 
cution. It was mighty thoughts radiating off from 
his heated mind like the sparkles from the glowing 
steel on his own anvil, getting on as they come out 
what clothing of language they might, and thus 
having on the most appropriate and expressive 
imaginable. Not a waste word, nor a wanting one. 
And he stood and delivered himself in a simplicity 
and earnestness of attitude and gesture belonging 
to his manly and now honored and distinguished 
trade. I admired the touch of rusticity in his ac- 
cent, amid his truly splendid diction, which be- 
tokened, as well as the vein of solid sense that ran 
entirely through his speech, that he had not been 
educated at the college. I thought of ploughman 
Burns as I listened to blacksmith Burritt. Oh ! 
what a dignity and beauty labor imparts to learn- 
ing." 

Elihu Burritt spent the last years of his life 
upon a little farm which he had contrived to buy 
in his native town. He was never married, but 
lived with his sister and her daughters. He was 
not so very much richer in worldly goods than 
when he had started for Boston with his property 
wrapped in a small handkerchief. He died in 
March, 1879, aged sixty-nine years. 



MICHAEL REYNOLDS, 

ENGINE-DEIVER. 



Literature in these days throws light into 
many an out-of-the-way corner. It is rapidly mak- 
ing us all acquainted with one another. A loco- 
motive engineer in England has recently written a 
book upon his art, in order, as he says, " to commu- 
nicate that species of knowledge which it is neces- 
sary for an engine-driver to possess who aspires to 
take high rank on the footplate ! " He magnifies 
his office, and evidently regards the position of an 
engineer as highly enviable. 

"It is very natuTcd^'' he remarks, "for those 
who are unacquainted with locomotive driving to 
admire the life of an engine-man, and to imagine 
how very pleasant it must be to travel on the en- 
gine. But they do not think of the gradations by 
which alone the higher positions are reached ; they 
see only on the express engine the picturesque side 
of the result of many years of patient observation 
and toil." 

This passage was to me a revelation ; for I had 
looked upon an engineer and his assistant with 



MICHAEL REYNOLDS. 37 

some compassion as well as admiration, and liave 
often thought how extremely disagreeable it must 
be to travel on the engine as they do. Not so 
Michael Reynolds, the author of this book, who 
has risen from the rank of fireman to that of lo- 
comotive inspector on the London and Brighton 
railroad. He tells us that a model engineer "is 
possessed by a master passion — a passion for the 
monarch of speed." Such an engineer is distin- 
guished, also, for his minute knowledge of the en- 
gine, and nothing makes him happier than to get 
some new light upon one of its numberless parts. 
So familiar is he with it that his ear detects the 
slightest variation in the beats of the machinery, 
and can tell the shocks and shakes which are caused 
by a defective road from those which are due to a 
defective engine. Even his nose acquires a pecul- 
iar sensitiveness. In the midst of so much heat, he 
can detect that which arises from friction before 
any mischief has been done. At every rate of 
speed he knows just how his engine ought to sound, 
shake, and smell. 

Let us see how life passes on a locomotive, and 
what is the secret of success in the business of an 
engineer. The art of arts in engine-driving is the 
management of the fire. Every reader is aware 
that taking care of a fire is sometliing in which few 
persons become expert. Most of us think that we 
ourselves possess the knack of it, but not another 
individual of our household agrees with us. Now, 



38 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

a man born with a genius for managing a locomo- 
tive is one who has a high degree of the fire-making 
instinct. Mr. Reynolds distinctly says that a man 
may be a good mechanic, May have even built loco- 
motives, and yet, if he is not a good " shovel-man," 
if he does not know how to manage his fire, he will 
never rise to distinction in his profession. The 
great secret is to build the fire so that the whole 
mass of fuel will ignite and burn freely without the 
use of the blower, and so bring the engine to the 
train with a fire that will last. When we see an 
engine blowing off steam furiously at the beginning 
of the trip, we must not be surprised if the train 
reaches the first station behind time, since it indi- 
cates a fierce, thin fire, that has been rapidly ignited 
by the blower. An accomplished engineer backs 
his engine to the train without any sign of steam or 
smoke, but with a fire so strong and sound that he 
can make a run of fifty miles in an hour without 
touching it. 

The engineer, it appears, if he has an important 
run to make, comes to his engine an hour before 
starting. His first business, on an English rail- 
road, is to read the notices, posted up in the engine 
house, of any change in the condition of the road 
requiring special care. His next duty is to inspect 
his engine in every part: first, to see if there is 
water enough in the boiler, and that the fire is pro- 
ceeding properly ; then, that he has the necessary 
quantity of water and coal in the tender. He next 



MICHAEL REYNOLDS. 39 

gets into the pit under his engine, with the proper 
tools, and inspects every portion of it, trying every 
nut and pin within his reach from below. Then he 
walks around the engine, and particularly notices 
if the oiling apparatus is exactly adjusted. Some 
parts require, for example, four drops of oil every 
minute, and he must see that the apparatus is set 
so as to yield just that quantity. He is also to 
look into his tool-box, and see if every article is in 
its place. Mr. Reynolds enumerates twenty -two 
objects which a good engineer will always have 
within his reach, such as j&re implements of various 
kinds, machinist tools, lamps of several sorts, oiling 
vessels, a quantity of flax and yarn, copper wire, a 
copy of the rules and his time-table ; all of which 
are to be in the exact place designed for them, so 
that they can be snatched in a moment. 

One of the chief virtues of the engineer and his 
companion, the fireman, is one which we are not 
accustomed to associate with their profession ; and 
that is cleanliness. On this point our author grows 
eloquent, and he declares that a clean engineer is 
almost certain to be an excellent one in every par- 
ticular. The men upon a locomotive cannot, it is 
true, avoid getting black smudge upon their faces. 
The point is that both the men and their engines 
should be clean in all the essential particulars, so 
that all the faculties of the men and all the devices 
^f the engine shall work with ease and certainty. 

"There is something," he remarks, "so very 



40 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

degrading about dirt, that even a poor beast Highly 
appreciates clean straw. Cleanliness hath a charm 
that hideth a multitude of faults, and it is not dif- 
ficult to trace a connection* between habitual clean- 
liness and a respect for general order, for punctual- 
ity, for truthfulness, for all placed in authority." 

Do you mark that sentence, reader ? The spirit 
of the Saxon race speaks in those lines. You ob- 
serve that this author ranks among the virtues 
" a respect for all placed in authority." That, of 
course, may be carried too far; nevertheless, the 
strong races, and the worthy men of all races, do 
cherish a respect for lawful authority. A good 
soldier is proud to salute his officer. 

On some English railroads, both engineers and 
engines are put to tests much severer than upon 
roads elsewhere. Between Holyhead and Chester, 
a distance of ninety-seven miles, the express trains 
run without stopping, and they do this with so little 
strain that an engine performed the duty every day 
for several years. A day's work of some crack en- 
gineers is to run from London to Crewe and back 
again in ten hours, a distance of three hundred and 
thirty miles, stopping only at Rugby for three min- 
utes on each trip. There are men who perform this 
service every working day the whole year through, 
without a single delay. This is a very great achieve- 
ment, and can only be done by engineers of the 
greatest skill and steadiness. It was long, indeed, 
before any man could do it, and even now there are 



MICHAEL REYNOLDS. 41 

engineers wlio dare not take the risk. On tlie 
Hudson River road some of the trains run from 
New York to Poughkeepsie, eighty miles, without 
stopping, but not every engineer could do it at 
first, and very often a train stopped at Peekskill to 
take in water. The water is the difficulty, and the 
good engineer is one who wastes no water and no 
coal. 

Mr. Reynolds enumerates all the causes of acci- 
dents from the engine, many of which cannot be 
understood by the uninitiated. As we read them 
over, and see in how many ways an engine can go 
wrong, we wonder that a train ever arrives at its 
journey's end in safety. At the conclusion of this 
formidable list, the author confesses that it is in- 
complete, and notifies young engineers that nobody 
can teach them the innermost secrets of the en- 
gine. Some of these, he remarks, require " years of 
study," and even then they remain in some degree 
mysterious. Nevertheless, he holds out to ambi- 
tion the possibility of final success, and calls upon 
young men to concentrate all their energies upon 
the work. 

" Self-reliance," he says, " is a grand element of 
character: it has won Olympic crowns and Isth- 
mian laurels ; it confers kinship with men who 
have vindicated their divine right to be held in the 
world's memory. Let the master passion of the soul 
evoke undaunted energy in pursuit of the attain- 
ment of one end, aiming for the highest in the spirit 



42 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

of the lowest, prompted by the burning thought of 
reward, which sooner or later will come." 

We perceive that Michael Reynolds possesses one 
of the prime requisites of success : he believes in 
the worth and dignity of his vocation ; and in writ- 
ing this little book he has done something to elevate 
it in the regard of others. To judge from some of 
his directions, I should suppose that engineers in 
England are not, as a class, as well educated or as 
intelligent as ours. Locomotive engineers in the 
United States rank very high in intelligence and 
respectability of character. 



MAJOE EGBERT PIKE, 

FAEMER. 



I ADVISE people who desire, above all things, to 
have a comfortable time in the world to be good 
conservatives. Do as other people do, think as 
other people think, swim with the current — that 
is the way to glide pleasantly down the stream of 
Hfe. But mark, O you lovers of inglorious ease, 
the men who are remembered with honor after they 
are dead do not do so ! They sometimes hreast the 
current, and often have a hard time of it, with the 
water splashing back in their faces, and the easy- 
going crowd jeering at them as they pant against 
the tide. 

This valiant, stalwart Puritan, Major Eobert 
Pike, of Salisbury, Massachusetts, who was born in 
1616, the year in which Shakespeare died, is a case 
in point. Salisbury, in the early day, was one of the 
frontier towns of Massachusetts, lying north of the 
Merrimac Eiver, and close to the Atlantic Ocean. 
For fifty years it was a kind of outpost of that part 
of the State. It lay right in the path by which the 
Indians of Maine and Canada were accustomed to 



44 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

slink down along the coast, often traveling on the 
sands of the beaches, and burst upon the settle- 
ments. During a long lifetime Major Pike was a 
magistrate and personage in that town, one of the 
leading spirits, upon whom the defense of the fron- 
tier chiefly devolved. 

Others were as brave as he in fighting Indians. 
Many a man could acquit himself valiantly in battle 
who would not have the courage to differ from the 
public opinion of his community. But on several 
occasions, when Massachusetts was wrong, Major 
Pike was right ; and he had the courage sometimes 
to resist the current of opinion when it was swollen 
into a raging torrent. He opposed, for example, 
the persecution of the Quakers, which is such a blot 
upon the records both of New England and old 
England. We can imagine what it must have cost 
to go against this policy by a single incident, which 
occurred in the year 1659 in Robert Pike's own 
town of Salisbury. 

On a certain day in August, Thomas Macy was 
caught in a violent storm of rain, and hurried home 
drenched to the skin. He found in his house four 
wayfarers, who had also come in for shelter. His 
wife being sick in bed, no one had seen or spoken 
to them. They asked him how far it was to Casco 
Bay. From their dress and demeanor he thought 
they might be Quakers, and, as it was unlawful to 
harbor persons of that sect, he asked them to go on 
their way, since he feared to give offense in enter- 



MAJOR ROBERT PIKE. 45 

taining them. As soon as the worst of the storm 
was over, they left, and he never saw them again. 
They were in his house about three quarters of an 
hour, during which he said very little to them, hav- 
ing himself come home wet, and found his wife 
sick. 

He was summoned to Boston, forty miles distant, 
to answer for this offense. Being unable to walk, 
and not rich enough to buy a horse, he wrote to the 
General Court, relating the circumstances, and ex- 
plaining his non-appearance. He was fined thirty 
shillings, and ordered to be admonished by the gov- 
ernor. He paid his fine, received his reprimand, 
and removed to the island of Nantucket, of which 
he was the first settler, and for some time the only 
white inhabitant. 

During this period of Quaker persecution, Major 
Pike led the opposition to it in Salisbury, until, at 
length, William Penn prevailed upon Charles II. 
to put an end to it in all his dominions. If the 
history of that period had not been so carefully 
recorded in official documents, we could scarcely 
believe to what a point the principle of authority 
was then carried. One of the laws which Robert 
Pike dared openly to oppose made it a misde- 
meanor for any one to exhort on Sunday who had 
not been regularly ordained. He declared that the 
men who voted for that law had broken their oaths, 
for they had sworn on taking their seats to enact 
nothing against the just liberty of Englishmen. 



46 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

For saying this he was pronounced guilty of " de- 
faming" the legislature, and he was sentenced to 
be disfranchised, disabled from holding any public 
office, bound to good behavior, and fined twenty 
marks, equal to about two hundred dollars in our 
present currency. 

Petitions were presented to the legislature asking 
the remission of the severe sentence. But even 
this was regarded as a criminal offense, and pro- 
ceedings were instituted against every signer. A 
few acknowledged that the signing was an offense, 
and asked the forgiveness of the court, but all the 
rest were required to give bonds for their appear- 
ance to answer. 

Another curious incident shows the rigor of the 
government of that day. According to the Puritan 
law, Svmday began at sunset on Saturday evening, 
and ended at sunset on Sunday evening. During 
the March thaw of 1680, Major Pike had occasion 
to go to Boston, then a journey of two days. Fear- 
ing that the roads were about to break up, he deter- 
mined to start on Sunday evening, get across the 
Merrimac, which was then a matter of difficulty 
during the melting of the ice, and make an early 
start from the other side of the river on Monday 
morning. The gallant major being, of course, a 
member of the church, and very religious, went to 
church twice that Sunday. Now, as to what fol- 
lowed, I will quote the testimony of an eye-witness, 
his traveling companion : — 



MAJOR ROBERT PIKE. 47 

" I do further testify tliat, though it was pretty 
late ere Mr. Burrows (the clergyman) ended his 
afternoon's exercise, yet did the major stay in his 
daughter's house till repetition of both forenoon 
and afternoon sermons was over, and the duties of 
the day concluded with prayer ; and, after a little 
stay, to be sure the sun was down, then we mounted, 
and not till then. The sun did indeed set in a 
cloud, and after we were mounted, I do remember 
the major spake of lightening up where the sun set ; 
but I saw no sun." 

A personal enemy of the major's brought a 
charge against him of violating the holy day by 
starting on his journey hefore the setting of the 
sun. The case was brought for trial, and several 
witnesses were examined. The accuser testified 
that "he did see Major Eobert Pike ride by his 
house toward the ferry upon the Lord's day when 
the sun was about half an hour high." Another 
witness confirmed this. Another testified : — 

"The sun did indeed set in a cloud, and, a little 
after the major was mounted, there appeared a 
light where the sun went down, which soon van- 
ished again, possibly half a quarter of an hour." 

Nevertheless, there were two vdtnesses who de- 
clared that the sun was not down when the major 
mounted, and so this worthy gentleman, then sixty- 
four years of age, a man of honorable renown in 
the commonwealth, was convicted of "profaning 
the Sabbath," fined ten shillings, and condemned 



48 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

to pay costs and fees, whicli were eight shillings 
more. He paid his fine, and was probably more 
careful during the rest of his life to mount on Sun- 
day evenings by the almanac. 

The special glory of this man's life was his stead- 
fast and brave opposition to the witchcraft mania 
of 1692. This deplorable madness was in New 
England a mere transitory panic, from which the 
people quickly recovered ; but while it lasted it al- 
most silenced opposition, and it required genuine 
heroism to lift a voice against it. No country of 
Europe was free from the delusion during that 
century, and some of its wisest men were carried 
away by it. The eminent judge, Sir William 
Blackstone, in his "Commentaries," published in 
1765, used this language : — 

" To deny the existence of witchcraft is to flatly 
contradict the revealed word of God, and the thing 
itself is a truth to which every nation has in its 
turn borne testimony." 

This was the conviction of that .age, and hun- 
dreds of persons were executed for practicing witch- 
craft. In Massachusetts, while the mania lasted, 
fear blanched every face and haunted every house. 

It was the more perilous to oppose the trials 
because there was a mingiiug of personal malevo- 
lence in the fell business, and an individual who 
objected was in danger of being himself accused. 
No station, no age, no merit, was a sufficient pro- 
tection. Mary Bradbury, seventy-five years of age, 



MAJOR ROBERT PIKE. 49 

the wife of one of the leading men of Salisbury, a 
woman of singular excellence and. dignity of char- 
acter, was among the convicted. She was a neigh- 
bor of Major Pike's, and a life-long friend. 

In the height of the panic he addressed to one of 
the judges an argument against the trials for witch- 
craft which is one of the most ingenious pieces of 
writing to be found among the documents of that 
age. The peculiarity of it is that the author argues 
on purely Biblical grounds ; for he accepted the 
whole Bible as authoritative, and all its parts as 
equally authoritative, from Genesis to Revelation. 
His main point was that witchcraft, whatever it 
may be, cannot be certainly proved against any one. 
The eye, he said, may be deceived ; the ear may be ; 
and all the senses. The devil himself may take the 
shape and likeness of a person or thing, when it is 
not that person or thing. The truth on the subject, 
he held, lay out of the range of mortal ken. 

" And therefore," he adds, " I humbly conceive 
that, in such a difficulty, it may be more safe, for 
the present, to let a guilty person live till further 
discovery than to put an innocent person to death." 

Happily this mania speedily passed, and troubled 
New England no more. Eobert Pike lived many 
years longer, and died in 1706, when he was nearly 
ninety-one years of age. He was a farmer, and 
gained a considerable estate, the whole of which he 
gave away to his heirs before his death. The house 
in which he lived is still standing in the town of 



50 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Salisbury, and belongs to bis descendants ; for on 
that bealtby coast men, families, and houses decay 
very slowly. James S. Pike, one of his descend- 
ants, the well-remembered " J. S. P." of the " Trib- 
une's " earlier day, and now an honored citizen of 
Maine, has recently written a little book about this 
ancient hero who assisted to set his fellow-citizens 
right when they were going wrong. 



GEORGE GEAHAM, 

CLOCK-MAKEE, BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 



It is supposed that the oldest clock in existence 
is one in the ancient castle of Dover, on the south- 
ern coast of England, bearing the date, 1348. It 
has been running, therefore, five hundred and thir- 
ty-six years. Other clocks of the same century 
exist in various parts of Europe, the works of which 
have but one hand, which points the hour, and re- 
quire winding every twenty-four hours. From the 
fact of so many large clocks of that period having 
been preserved in whole or in part, it is highly 
probable that the clock was then an old invention. 

But how did people measure time during the 
countless ages that rolled away before the invention 
of the clock? The first time-measurer was prob- 
ably a post stuck in the ground, the shadow of 
which, varying in length and direction, indicated 
the time of day, whenever the sun was not obscured 
by clouds. The sun-dial, which was an improve- 
ment upon this, was known to the ancient Jews and 
Greeks. The ancient Chinese and Egyptians pos- 
sessed an instrument called the Clepsydra (water- 



52 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

stealer), whicli was merely a vessel full of water 
with a small hole in the bottom by which the water 
slowly escaped. There were marks in the inside of 
the vessel which showed the hour. An improve- 
ment upon this ^as made about two hundred and 
thirty-five years before Christ by an Egyptian, 
who caused the escaping water to turn a system of 
wheels ; and the motion was communicated to a rod 
which pointed to the hours upon a circle resem- 
bling a clock-face. Similar clocks were made in 
which sand was used instead of water. The hour- 
glass was a time-measurer for many centuries in 
Europe, and all the ancient literatures abound in 
allusions to the rapid, unobserved, running away 
of its sands. 

The next advance was the invention of the wheel- 
and-weight-clock, such as has been in use ever since. 
The first instrument of this kind may have been 
made by the ancients ; but no clear allusion to its 
existence has been discovered earlier than 996, 
when Pope Sylvester II. is known to have had one 
constructed. It was Christian Huygens, the famous 
Dutch philosopher, who applied, in 1658, the pen- 
dulum to the clock, and thus led directly to those 
more refined and subtle improvements, which ren- 
der our present clocks and watches among the least 
imperfect of all human contrivances. 

George Graham, the great London clock-maker 
of Queen Anne's and George the First's time, and 
one of the most noted improvers of the clock, was 



GEORGE GRAHAM. 53 

born in 1675. After spending the first thirteen 
years of his life in a village in the North of Eng- 
land, he made his way to London, an intelligent 
and well-bred Quaker boy ; and there he was so 
fortunate as to be taken as an apprentice by Tom- 
pion, then the most celebrated clock-maker in Eng- 
land, whose name is still to be seen upon ancient 
watches and clocks. Tompion was a most exqui- 
site mechanic, proud of his work and jealous of his 
name. He is the Tompion who figured in Far- 
quhar's play of "The Inconstant;" and Prior men- 
tions him in his "Essay on Learning," where he 
says that Tompion on a watch or clock was proof 
positive of its excellence. A person once brought 
him a watch to repair, upon which his name had 
been fraudulently engraved. He took up a ham- 
mer and smashed it, and then selecting one of his 
own watches, gave it to the astonished customer, 
saying : " Sir, here is a watch of my making." 

Graham was worthy to be the apprentice of such 
a master, for he not only showed intelligence, skill, 
and fidelity, but a happy turn for invention. Tom- 
pion became warmly attached to him, treated him 
as a son, gave him the full benefit of his skill and 
knowledge, took him into partnership, and finally 
left him sole possessor of the business. For nearly 
half a century George Graham, Clock-maker, was 
one of the best known signs in Fleet Street, and 
the instruments made in his shop were valued in all 
the principal countries of Europe. The great clock 



54 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

at Greenwicli Observatory, made by him one hun- 
dred and fifty years ag'o, is still in use and could 
hardly now be surpassed in substantial excellence. 
The mural arch in the same establishment, used for 
the testing of quadrants and other marine instru- 
ments, was also his work. When the French gov- 
ernment sent Maupertuis within the polar circle, 
to ascertain the exact figure of the earth, it was 
George Graham, Clock-maker of Fleet Street, who 
supplied the requisite instruments. 

But it was not his excellence as a mechanic that 
causes his name to be remembered at the present 
time. He made two capital inventions in clock- 
machinery which are still universally used, and will 
probably never be superseded. It was a common 
complaint among clock - makers, when he was a 
young man, that the pendulum varied in length 
according to the temperature, and consequently 
caused the clock to go too slowly in hot weather, 
and too fast in cold. Thus, if a clock went cor- 
rectly at a temperature of sixty degrees, it would 
lose three seconds a day if the temperature rose to 
seventy, and three more seconds a day for every 
additional ten degrees of heat. Graham first en- 
deavored to rectify this inconvenience by making 
the pendulum of several different kinds of metal, 
which was a partial remedy. But the invention by 
which he overcame the difficulty comjDletely, con- 
sisted in employing a column of mercury as the 
" bob " of the pendulum. The hot weather, which 



GEORGE GRAHAM. 55 

lengthened the steel rods, raised the column of 
mercury, and so brought the centre of oscillation 
higher. If the column of mercury was of the right 
length, the lengthening or the shortening of the 
pendulum was exactly counterbalanced, and the 
variation of the clock, through changes of the tem- 
perature, almost annihilated. 

This was a truly exquisite invention. The clock 
he himself made on this plan for Greenwich, after 
being in use a century and a half, requires atten- 
tion not of tener than once in fifteen months. Some 
important discoveries in astronomy are due to the 
exactness with which Graham's clock measures time. 
He also invented what is called the " dead escape- 
ment," still used, I believe, in all clocks and 
watches, from the commonest five-dollar watch to 
the most elaborate and costly regulator. Another 
pretty invention of his was a machine for showing 
the position and motions of the heavenly bodies, 
which was exceedingly admired by our grandfathers. 
Lord Orrery having amused himself by copying 
this machine, a French traveler who saw it com- 
plimented the maker by naming it an Orrery, which 
has led many to suppose it to have been an inven- 
tion of that lord. It now appears, however, that 
the true inventor was the Fleet Street clock-maker. 

The merits of this admirable mechanic procured 
for him, while he was stiU little more than a young 
man, the honor of being elected a member of the 
Royal Society, the most illustrious scientific body 



56 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

in the world. And a very worthy member ht 
proved. If the reader will turn to the Transac- 
tions of that learned society, he may find in them 
twenty-one papers contributed by George Graham. 
He was, however, far from regarding himself as a 
philosopher, but to the end of his days always 
styled himself a clock-maker. 

They stiR relate an anecdote showing the con- 
fidence he had in his work. A gentleman who 
bought a watch of him just before departing for 
India, asked him how far he could depend on its 
keeping the correct time. 

"Sir," replied Graham, "it is a watch which I 
have made and regulated myself ; take it with you 
wherever you please. If after seven years you come, 
back to see me, and can tell me there has been a 
difference of five minutes, I will return you your 
money." 

Seven years passed, and the gentleman returned. 

" Sir," said he, " I bring you back your watch." 

" I remember," said Graham, " our conditions. 
Let me see the watch. Well, what do you com- 
plain of?" 

" Why," was the reply, " I have had it seven 
years, and there is a difference of more than five 
minutes." 

" Indeed ! " said Graham. " In that case I return 
you your money." 

" I would not part with my watch," said the 
gentleman, " for ten times the sum I paid for it." 



GEORGE GRAHAM. 61 

"And I," rejoined Graham, "would not break 
my word for any consideration." 

He insisted on taking back the watch, which 
ever after he used as a regulator. 

This is a very good story, and is doubtless sub- 
stantially true; but no watch was ever yet made 
which has varied as little as five minutes in seven 
years. • Readers may remember that the British 
government once offered a reward of twenty thou- 
sand pounds sterling for the best chronometer, and 
the prize was awarded to Harrison for a chronom- 
eter which varied two minutes in a sailing voyage 
from England to Jamaica and back. 

George Graham died in 1751, aged seventy-six 
years, universally esteemed as an ornament of his 
age and country. In Westminster Abbey, among 
the tombs of poets, philosophers, and statesmen, 
may be seen the graves of the two clock-makers, 
master and apprentice, Tompion and Graham. 



JOHN HAEEISON, 

EXQUISITE WATCH-MAKEE. 



He was first a carpenter, and the son of a car^ 
penter, born and reared in English Yorkshire, in 
a village too insignificant to appear on any but a 
county map. Faulby is about twenty miles from 
York, and there John Harrison was born in 1693, 
when William and Mary reigned in England. He 
was thirty-five years of age before he was known 
beyond his own neighborhood. He was noted there, 
however, for being a most skillful workman. There 
is, perhaps, no trade in which the degrees of skill 
are so far apart as that of carpenter. The differ- 
ence is great indeed between the clumsy-fisted fel- 
low who knocks together a farmer's pig-pen, and 
the almost artist who makes a dining - room floor 
equal to a piece of mosaic. Dr. Franklin speaks 
with peculiar relish of one of his young comrades 
in Philadelphia, as " the most exquisite joiner " he 
had ever known. 

It was not only in carpentry that John Harrison 
reached extraordinary skill and delicacy of stroke. 
He became an excellent machinist, and was par- 



JOHN HARRISON. 59 

ticularly devoted from an early age to clock-work. 
He was a student also in the science of the day. A 
contemporary of Newton, he made himself capable 
of understanding the discoveries of that great man, 
and of following the Transactions of the Eoyal So- 
ciety in mathematics, astronomy, and natural phi- 
losophy. 

Clock-work, however, was his ruling taste as a 
workman, for many years, and he appears to have 
set before him as a task the making of a clock that 
should surpass all others. He says in one of his 
pamphlets that, in the year 1726, when he was 
thirty-three years of age, he finished two large pen- 
dulum clocks which, being placed in different houses 
some distance apart, differed from each other only 
one second in a month. He also says that one of 
his clocks, which he kept for his own use, the going 
of which he compared with a fixed star, varied from 
the true time only one minute in ten years. 

Modern clock-makers are disposed to deride these 
extraordinary claims, particularly those of Paris and 
Switzerland. We know, however, that John Har- 
rison was one of the most perfect workmen that 
ever lived, and I find it di:fficult to believe that a 
man whose works were so true could be false in his 
words. 

In perfecting these amateur clocks he made a 
beautiful invention, the principle of which is still 
employed in other machines besides clock-work. 
Like George Graham, he observed that the chief 



60 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

cause of irregularity in a well-made clock was the 
varying length, of the pendulum, which in warm 
weather expanded and became a little longer, and 
in cold weather became shorter. He remedied 
this by the invention of what is often called the 
gridiron pendulum, made of several bars of steel 
and brass, and so arranged as to neutralize and 
correct the tendency of the pendulum to vary in 
length. Brass is very sensitive to changes of tem- 
perature, steel much less so ; and hence it is not 
difficult to arrange the pendulum so that the long 
exterior bars of steel shall very nearly curb the 
expansion and contraction of the shorter brass 
ones. 

While he was thus perfecting himself in obscur- 
ity, the great world was in movement also, and it 
was even stimulating his labors, as well as giving 
them their direction. 

The navigation of the ocean was increasing every 
year in importance, chiefly through the growth of 
the American colonies and the taste for the rich 
products of India. The art of navigation was still 
imj)erfect. In order that the captain of a ship 
at sea may know precisely where he is, he must 
know two things : how far he is from' the equator, 
and how far he is from a certain known place, say 
Greenwich, Paris, Washington. Being sure of 
those two things, he can take his chart and mark 
upon it the precise spot where his ship is at a given 
moment. Then he knows how to steer, and all else 



JOHN HARRISON. 61 

that lie needs to know in order to pursue his course 
with confidence. 

When John Harrison was a young man, the art 
of navigation had so far advanced that the distance 
from the equator, or the latitude, coiild be as- 
certained with certainty by observation of the heav- 
enly bodies. One great difficulty remained to be 
overcome — the finding of the longitude. This 
was done imperfectly by means of a watch which 
kept Greenwich time as near as possible. Every 
fine day the captain could ascertain by an observa- 
tion of the sun just when it was twelve o'clock. If, 
on looking at this chronometer, he found that by 
Greenwich time it was quarter past two, he could 
at once ascertain his distance from Greenwich, or 
in other words, his longitude. 

But the terrible question was, how near right is 
the chronometer ? A variation of a very few min- 
utes would make a difference of more than a hun- 
dred miles. 

To this day, no perfect time-keeper has ever been 
made. From an early period, the governments of 
commercial nations were solicitous to find a way of 
determining the longitude that would be sufficiently 
correct. Thus, the King of Spain, in 1598, offered 
a reward of a thousand crowns to any one who should 
discover an approximately correct method. Soon 
after, the government of Holland offered ten thou- 
sand florms. In 1714 the English government 
took hold of the matter, and offered a series of 



62 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

dazzling prizes : Five thousand pounds for a chro* 
nometer that would enable a ship six months from 
home to get her longitude within sixty miles ; seven 
thousand five hundred pounds, if within forty- 
miles ; ten thousand pounds if within thirty miles. 
Another clause of the bill offered a premium of 
twenty thousand pounds for the invention of any 
method whatever, by means of which the longitude 
could be determined within thirty miles. The bill 
appears to have been drawn somewhat carelessly ; 
but the substance of it was sufficiently plain, name- 
ly, that the British Government was ready to make 
the fortune of any man who should enable navi- 
gators to make their way across the ocean in a 
straight line to their desired port. 

Two years after, the Regent of France offered a 
prize of a hundred thousand francs for the same 
object. 

All the world went to watch-making. John Har- 
rison, stimulated by these offers to increased exer- 
tion, in the year 1736 presented himself at Green- 
wich with one of his wonderful clocks, provided 
with the gridiron pendulum, which he exhibited 
and explained to the commissioners. Perceiving 
the merit and beauty of his invention, they placed 
the clock on board a ship bound for Lisbon. This 
was subjecting a pendulum clock to a very unfair 
trial ; but it corrected the ship's reckoning several 
miles. The commissioners now urged him to com- 
pete for the chronometer prize, and in order to 



JOHN HARRISON. 63 

enable him to do so they supplied him with money, 
from time to time, for twenty-four years. At length 
he produced his chronometer, about four inches in 
diameter, and so mounted as not to share the mo- 
tion of the vessel. 

In 1761, when he was sixty-eight years of age, he 
wrote to the commissioners that he had completed a 
chronometer for trial, and requested them to test it 
on a voyage to the West Indies, under the care of 
his son William. His requests were granted. The 
success of the chronometer was wonderful. On ar- 
riving at Jamaica, the chronometer varied but four 
seconds from Greenwich time, and on returning to 
England the entire variation was a little short of 
two minutes ; which was equivalent to a longitudi- 
nal variation of eighteen miles. The ship had been 
absent from Portsmouth one hundred and forty- 
seven days. 

This signal triumph was won after forty years 
of labor and experiment. The commissioners de- 
manding another trial, the watch was taken to Bar- 
badoes, and, after an absence of a hundred and 
fifty-six days, showed a variation of only fifteen 
seconds. After other and very exacting tests, it 
was decided that John Harrison had fulfilled all the 
prescribed conditions, and he received accordingly 
the whole sum of twenty thousand pounds sterling. 

It is now asserted by experts that he owed the 
success of his watch, not so much to originality of 
invention, as to the exquisite skill and precision of 



64 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

his workmanship. He had one of the most perfect 
mechanical hands that ever existed. It was the 
touch of a Raphael applied to mechanism. 

John Harrison lived to the good old age of 
eighty-three years. He died in London in 1776, 
about the time when General Washington was get- 
ting ready to drive the English troops and their 
Tory friends out of Boston. It is not uncommon 
now-a-days for a ship to be out four or five months, 
and to hit her port so exactly as to sail straight 
into it without altering her course more than a 
point or two. 



PETEK FANEUIL, 

AND THE GREAT HALL HE BUILT. 



A STORY is told of the late Ealpli Waldo Emer- 
son's first lecture in Cincinnati, forty years ago. 
A worthy pork-packer, who was observed to listen 
with close attention to the enigmatic utterances of 
the sage, was asked by one of his friends what he 
thought of the performance. 

" I liked it very well," said he, " and I 'm glad 
I went, because I learned from it how the Boston 
people pronounce Faneuil Hall," 

He was perhaps mistaken, for it is hardly prob- 
able that Mr. Emerson gave the name in the old- 
fashioned Boston style, which was a good deal like 
the word funnel. The story, however, may serve 
to show what a wide-spread and intense reputation 
the building has. Of all the objects in Boston it is 
probably the one best known to the people of the 
United States, and the one surest to be visited by 
the stranger. The Hall is a curious, quaint little 
interior, with its high galleries, and its collection 
of busts and pictures of Revolutionary heroes. 
Peter Faneuil little thought what he was doing 



66 CAPTAINS OF INDCrSTRY. 

when he built it, though he appears to have been a 
man of liberal and enlightened mind. 

The Faneuils were prosperous merchants in the 
French city of Eochelle in 1685, when Louis XIV. 
revoked the Edict of Nantes. The great-grand- 
father of John Jay was also in large business there 
at that time, and so were the ancestors of our De- 
lanceys, Badeaus, Pells, Secors, Allaires, and other 
families familiar to the ears of New Yorkers, many 
of them having distinguished living representatives 
among us. They were of the religion " called Ee- 
formed," as the king of France contemptuously 
styled it. Reformed or not, they were among the 
most intelligent, enterprising, and wealthy of the 
merchants of Rochelle. 

How little we can conceive the effect upon their 
minds of the order which came from Paris in Octo- 
ber, 1685, which was intended to put an end for- 
ever to the Protestant religion in France, The 
king meant to make thorough work of it. He or- 
dered all the Huguenot churches in the kingdom to 
be instantly demolished. He forbade the dissent- 
ers to assemble either in a building or out of doors, 
on pain of death and confiscation of all their goods. 
Their clergymen were required to leave the king- 
dom within fifteen days. Their schools were in- 
terdicted, and all children hereafter born of Prot- 
estant parents were to be baptized by the Catholic 
clergymen, and reared as Catholics. 

These orders were enforced with reckless feroC' 



PETER FANEUIL. 67 

ity, particularly in the remoter provinces and cities 
of the kingdom. The Faneuils, the Jays, and the 
Delanceys of that renowned city saw their house of 
worship leveled with the ground. Dragoons were 
quartered in their houses, whom they were obliged 
to maintain, and to whose insolence they were ob- 
liged to submit, for the troops were given to under- 
stand that they were the king's enemies and had no 
rights which royal soldiers were bound to respect. 
At the same time, the edict forbade them to depart 
from the kingdom, and particular precautions were 
taken to prevent men of capital from doing so. 

John Jay records that the ancestor of his family 
made his escape by artifice, and succeeded in taking 
with him a portion of his property. Such was also 
the good fortune of the brothers Faneuil, who were 
part of the numerous company from old RocheUe 
who emigrated to New York about 1690, and formed 
a settlement upon Long Island Sound, twelve miles 
from New York, which they named, and which is 
still called. New Rochelle. The old names can still 
be read in that region, both in the churchyards and 
upon the door plates, and the village of Pelham 
recalls the name of the Pell family who fled from 
Rochelle about the same time, and obtained a grant 
of six thousand acres of land near by. The new- 
comers were warmly welcomed, as their friends and 
relations were in England. 

The Faneuil brothers did not remain long in New 
Rochelle, but removed to Boston in 1691. Ben- 



68 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

jamin and Andrew were their names. There are 
many traces of them in the early records, indicat- 
ing that they were merchants of large capital and 
extensive business for that day. There are evi- 
dences also that they were men of intelligence and 
public spirit. They appear to have been members 
of the Church of England in Boston, which of it- 
self placed them somewhat apart from the majority 
of their fellow-citizens. 

Peter Faneuil, the builder of the famous Hall, 
who was born in Boston about 1701, the oldest of 
eleven children, succeeded to the business founded 
by his uncle Andrew, and while still a young man 
had greatly increased it, and was reckoned one of 
the leading citizens. 

A curious controversy had agitated the people of 
Boston for many years. The town had existed for 
nearly a century without having a public market 
of any kind, the country people bringing in their 
produce and selling it from door to door. In 
February, 1717, occurred the Great Snow, which 
destroyed great numbers of domestic and wild ani- 
. mals, and caused provisions for some weeks to be 
scarce and dear. The inhabitants laid the blame 
of the dearness to the rapacity of the hucksters, and 
the subject being brought up in town meeting, a 
committee reported that the true remedy was to 
build a market, to appoint market days, and estab- 
lish rules. The farmers opposed the scheme, as 
did also many of the citizens. The project being 



PETER FANEUIL. 69 

defeated, it was revived year after year, but the 
country people always contrived to defeat it. An 
old chronicler has a quaint passage on the subject. 

" The country people," he says, " always op- 
posed the market, so that the question could not 
be settled. The reason they give for it is, that if 
market days were appointed, all the country people 
coming in at the same time would glut it, and the 
towns-people would buy their provisions for what 
they pleased ; so rather choose to send them as they 
think fit. And sometimes a tall fellow brings in 
a turkey or goose to sell, and will travel through 
the whole town to see who will give most for it, and 
it is at last sold for three and six pence or four 
shillings ; and if he had stayed at home, he could 
have earned a crown by his labor, which is the cus- 
tomary price for a day's work. So any one may 
judge of the stupidity of the country people." 

In Boston libraries, pamphlets are still preserved 
on this burning question of a market, which re- 
quired seventeen years of discussion before a town 
meeting was brought to vote for the erection of 
market houses. In 1734, seven hundred pounds 
were appropriated for the purpose. The market 
hours were fixed from sunrise to 1 P. m., and a bell 
was ordered to be rung to announce the time of 
opening. The country people, however, had their 
way, notwithstanding. They so resolutely refrained 
from attending the markets that in less than four 
years the houses feU into complete disuse. One of 



70 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

the buildings was taken down, and the timber used 
in constructing a workhouse ; one was turned into 
stores, and the third was torn to pieces by a mob, 
who carried off the material for their own use. 

Nevertheless, the market question could not be 
allayed, for the respectable inhabitants of the town 
were still convinced of the need of a market as a 
defense against exorbitant charges. For some years 
the subject was brought up in town meetings ; but 
as often as it came to the point of appropriating 
money the motion was lost. At length Mr. Peter 
Faneuil came forward to end the dissension in a 
truly magnificent manner. He offered to build 
a market house at his own expense, and make a 
present of it to the town. 

Even this liberal offer did not silence opposi- 
tion. A petition was presented to the town meeting, 
signed by three himdred and forty inhabitants, 
asking the acceptance of Peter Faneuil's proposal. 
The opposition to it, however, was strong. At 
length it was agreed that, if a market house were 
built, the country people should be at liberty to 
sell their produce from door to door if they pleased. 
Even with this concession, only 367 citizens voted 
for the market and 360 voted against it. Thus, by 
a majority of seven, the people of Boston voted to 
accept the most munificent gift the town had re- 
ceived since it was founded. 

Peter Faneuil went beyond his promise. Besides 
building an ample market place, he added a second 



PETER FANEUIL. 71 

story for a town hall, and other offices for public 
use. The building originally measured one hun- 
dred feet by forty, and was finished in so elegant 
a style as to be reckoned the chief ornament of the 
town. It was completed in 1742, after two years 
had been spent in building it. It had scarcely 
been opened for public use when Peter Faneuil 
died, aged a little less than forty-three years. The 
grateful citizens gave him a public funeral, and 
the Selectmen appointed Mr. John Lovell, school- 
master, to deliver his funeral oration in the Hall 
bearing his name. The oration was entered at 
length upon the records of the town, and has been 
frequently published. 

In 1761 the Hall was destroyed by fire. It was 
immediately rebuilt, and this second structure was 
the Faneuil Hall in which were held the meetings 
preceding and during the war for Independence, 
which have given it such universal celebrity. Here 
Samuel Adams spoke. Here the feeling was created 
which made Massachusetts the centre and source of 
the revolutionary movement. 

Let me not omit to state that those obstinate 
country people, who knew what they wanted, were 
proof against the attractions of Faneuil Hall mar- 
ket. They availed themselves of their privilege 
of selling their produce from door to door, as they 
had done from the beginning of the colony. Fewer 
and fewer hucksters kept stalls in the market, and 
in a few years the lower room was closed altogether. 



72 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

The building served, however, as Town Hall until 
it was superseded by structures more in harmony 
with modern needs and tastes. 

What thrilling scenes the Hall has witnessed ! 
That is a pleasing touch in one of the letters of 
John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, where he alludes 
to what was probably his last visit to the scene of 
his youthful glory, Faneuil Hall. Mr. Adams was 
eighty-three years old at the time, and it was the 
artist Trumbull, also an old man, who prevailed 
upon him to go to the Hall. 

" Trumbull," he wrote, " with a band of associ- 
ates, drew me by the cords of old friendship to see 
his picture, on Saturday, where I got a great cold. 
The air of Faneuil is changed. / have not been 
used to catch cold there.'''' 

No, indeed. If the process of storing electricity 
had been applied to the interior of this electric edi- 
fice, enough of the fluid could have been saved to 
illuminate Boston every Fourth of July. It is hard 
to conceive of a tranquil or commonplace meeting 
there, so associated is it in our minds with out- 
bursts of passionate feeling. 

Speaking of John Adams calls to mind an anec- 
dote related recently by a venerable clergyman of 
New York, Rev. William Hague. Mr. Hague of- 
ficiated as chaplain at the celebration of the Fourth 
of July in Boston, in 1843, when Charles Francis 
Adams delivered the oration in Faneuil Hall, which 
was his first appearance on a public platform. 



PETER FANEUIL. 73 

While the procession was forming to march to the 
Hall, ex-President John Quincy Adams entered 
into conversation with the chaplain, during which 
he spoke as follows : — 

" This is one of the happiest days of my whole 
life. Fifty years expire to-day since I performed 
in Boston my first public service, which was the de- 
livery of an oration to celebrate our national inde- 
pendence. After half a century of active life, I am 
spared by a benign Providence to witness my son's 
performance of his first public service, to deliver 
an oration in honor of the same great event." 

The chaplain replied to Mr. Adams : — 

" President, I am well aware of the notable con- 
nection of events to which you refer ; and having 
committed and declaimed a part of your own great 
oration when a schoolboy in New York, I could 
without effort repeat it to you now." 

The aged statesman was surprised and gratified 
at this statement. The procession was formed and 
the oration successfully delivered. Since that time, 
I believe, an Adams of the fourth generation has 
spoken in the same place, and probably some read- 
ers will live to hear one of the fifth and sixth. 

The venerable John Adams might well say that 
he had not been used to catch cold in the air of 
Faneuil Hall, for as far as I know there has never 
been held there a meeting which has not something 
of extraordinary warmth in its character. I have 
iientioned above that the first public meeting ever 



74 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

held in it after its completion in 1742 was to com- 
memorate the premature death of the donor of the 
edifice ; on which occasion Mr. John Lovell deliv- 
ered a glowing eulogium. 

" Let this stately edifice which bears his name," 
cried the orator, " witness for him what sums he 
expended in public munificence. This building, 
erected by him, at his own immense charge, for the 
convenience and ornament of the town, is incom- 
parably the greatest benefaction ever yet known to 
our western shore." 

Towards the close of his speech, the eloquent 
schoolmaster gave utterance to a sentiment which 
has often since been repeated within those walls." 

" May this hall be ever sacred to the interests of 
truth, of justice, of loyalty, of honor, of liberty. 
May no private views nor party broils ever enter 
these walls." 

Whether this wish has been fulfilled or not is a 
matter of opinion. General Gage doubtless thought 
that it had not been. 

Scenes of peculiar interest took place in the Hall 
about the beginning of the year 1761, when the 
news was received in Boston that King George II. 
had fallen dead in his palace at Kensington, and 
that George III., his grandson, had been pro- 
claimed king. It required just two months for 
this intelligence to cross the ocean. The first thing 
in order, it seems, was to celebrate the accession of 
the young king. He was proclaimed from the baL 



PETER FANEUIL. 75 

cony of the town house ; guns were fired from all 
the forts in the harbor ; and in the afternoon a 
grand dinner was given in Faneuil Hall. These 
events occurred on the last day but one of the year 
1760. 

The first day of the new year, 1761, was ushered 
in by the solemn tolling of the church beUs in the 
town, and the firing of minute guns on Castle Is- 
land. These mournful sounds were heard aU. day, 
even to the setting of the sun. However dole- 
ful the day may have seemed, there was more ap- 
propriateness in these signs of mourning than any 
man of that generation could have known ; for with 
George II. died the indolent but salutary let-them- 
alone policy under which the colonies enjoyed pros- 
perity and peace. With the accession of the new 
king the troubles began which ended in the disrup- 
tion of the empire. George HI. was the last king 
whose accession received official recognition in the 
thirteen colonies. 

I have hunted in vain through my books to find 
some record of the dinner given in Faneuil HaU to 
celebrate the beginning of the new reign. It would 
be interesting to know how the sedate people of 
Boston comported themselves on a festive occasion 
of that character, John Adams was a young bar- 
rister then. If the after-dinner speeches were as 
outspoken as the political comments he entered in 
his Diary, the proceedings could not have been very 
acceptable to the royal governor. Mr. Adams was 



76 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

far from thinking that England had issued victori- 
ous from the late campaigns, and he thought that 
France was then by far the most brilliant and pow- 
erful nation in Europ^. 

A few days after these loyal ceremonies, Boston 
experienced what is now known there as a " cold 
snap," and it was so severe as almost to close the 
harbor with ice. One evening, in the midst of it, a 
fire broke out opposite Faneuil Hall. Such was the 
extremity of cold that the water forced from the 
engines fell upon the ground in particles of ice. The 
fire swept across the street and caught Faneuil Hall, 
the interior of which was entirely consumed, noth- 
ing remaining but the solid brick walls. It was re- 
built in just two years, and reopened in the midst of 
another remarkably cold time, which was signalized 
by another bad fire. There was so much distress 
among the poor that winter that a meeting was 
held in Faneuil Hall for their relief. Rev. Samuel 
Mather preaching a sermon on the occasion, and 
this was the first discourse delivered in it after it 
was rebuilt. 

Seven years later the HaU was put to a very dif- 
ferent use. A powerful fleet of twelve men-of-war, 
filled with troops, was coming across the ocean to 
apply military pressure to the friends of liberty. 
A convention was held in Faneuil Hall, attended 
by delegates from the surrounding towns, as well as 
by the citizens of Boston. The people were in con- 
sternation, for they feared that any attempt to land 



PETER FANEUIL. 77 

the troops would lead to violent resistance. The 
convention indeed requested the inhabitants to 
" provide themselves with firearms, that they may 
be prepared in case of sudden danger." 

The atmosphere was extremely electric in Boston 
just then. The governor sent word to the conven- 
tion assembled in Faneuil Hall that their meeting 
was " a very high offense " which only their igno- 
rance of the law could excuse; but the plea of 
ignorance could no longer avail them, and he com- 
manded them to disperse. The convention sent a 
reply to the governor, which he refused to receive, 
and they continued in session until the fleet en- 
tered the harbor. 

October 2, 1768, the twelve British men-of-war 
were anchored in a semicircle opposite the town, 
with cannon loaded, and cleared for action, as 
though Boston were a hostile stronghold, instead of 
a defenseless country town of loyal and innocent 
fellow-citizens. Two regiments landed; one of 
which encamped on the Common, and the other 
marched to Faneuil Hall, where they were quar- 
tered for four or five weeks. With one accord the 
merchants and property-owners refused to let any 
building for the use of the troops. 

Boston people to this day chuckle over the mis- 
hap of the sheriff who tried to get possession of a 
large warehouse through a secret aperture in the 
cellar wall. He did succeed in effecting an en- 
trance, with several of his deputies. But as soon 



78 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

as they were inside tlie building, the patriots out- 
side closed the hole ; and thus, instead of getting 
possession of the building, the loyal officers found 
themselves prisoners in a dark cellar. 

They were there for several hours before they 
could get word to the commanding officer, who re- 
leased them. 

The joke was consolatory to the inhabitants. It 
was on this occasion that Rev. Mather Byles height- 
ened the general merriment by his celebrated jest 
on the British soldiers : 

" The people," said he, " sent over to England 
to obtain a redress of grievances. The grievances 
have returned red-dressed.^^ 

The Hall is still used for public meetings, and 
the region roundabout is still an important public 
market. 



CHAUNCEY JEROME, 

YANKEE CLOCK-MAKEE. 



Poor boys had a hard time of it in New England 
eighty years ago. Observe, now, how it fared with 
Chauncey Jerome, — he who founded a celebrated 
clock business in Connecticut, that turned out six 
hundred clocks a day, and sent them to foreign 
countries by the ship-load. 

But do not run away with the idea that it was 
the hardship and loneliness of his boyhood that 
"made a man of him." On the contrary, they 
injured, n'arrowed, and saddened him. He would 
have been twice the man he was, and happier all 
his days, if he had passed an easier and a more 
cheerful childhood. It is not good for boys to live 
as he lived, and work as he worked, during the 
period of growth, and I am glad that fewer boys 
are now compelled to bear such a lot as his. 

His father was a blacksmith and nailmaker, of 
Plymouth, Connecticut, with a houseful of hungry 
boys and girls; and, consequently, as soon as 
Chauncey could handle a hoe or tie up a bundle of 
grain he was kept at work on the farm ; for, in 



80 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

those days, almost all mechanics in New England 
cultivated land in the summer time. The boy went 
to school during the three winter months, until he 
was ten years old ; then his school-days and play- 
days were over forever, and his father took him 
into the shop to help make nails. 

Even as a child he showed that power of keep- 
ing on, to which he owed his after-success. There 
was a great lazy boy at the district school he at- 
tended who had a load of wood to chop, which he 
hated to do, and this small Chauncey, eight or nine 
years of age, chopped the whole of it for him for 
one cent! Often he would chop wood for the 
neighbors in moonlight evenings for a few cents a 
load. It is evident that the quality which made 
him a successful man of business was not devel- 
oped by hardship, for he performed these labors 
voluntarily. He was naturally industrious and per- 
severing. 

When he was eleven years of age his father sud- 
denly died, and he found himself obliged to leave 
his happy home and find farm work as a poor hire- 
ling boy. There were few farmers then in Connec- 
ticut — nay, there were few people anywhere in the 
world — who knew how to treat an orphan obliged 
to work for his subsistence among strangers. On 
a Monday morning, with his little bundle of clothes 
in his hand, and an almost bursting heart, he bade 
his mother and his brothers and sisters good-by, 
and walked to the place which he had found for 
himself, on a farm a few miles from home. 



CHAUNCEY JEROME. 81 

He was most willing to work ; but Ms affec- 
tionate heart was starved at his new place ; and 
scarcely a day passed during his jBrst year when he 
did not burst into tears as he worked alone in the 
fields, thinking of the father he had lost, and of 
the happy family broken up never to live together 
again. It was a lonely farm, and the people with 
whom he lived took no interest in him as a human 
being, but regarded him with little more considera- 
tion than one of their other working animals. They 
took care, however, to keep him steadily at work, 
early and late, hot and cold, i*ain and shine. Often 
he worked all day in the woods chopping down 
trees with his shoes full of snow ; he never had a 
pair of boots tiU he was nearly twenty-one years 
of age. 

Once in two weeks he had a great joy ; for his 
master let him go to church every other Sunday. 
After working two weeks without seeing more than 
half a dozen people, it gave him a peculiar and in- 
tense delight just to sit in the church gallery and 
look down upon so many human beings. It was 
the only alleviation of his dismal lot. 

Poor little lonely wretch ! One day, when he was 
thirteen years of age, there occurred a total eclipse 
of the sun, a phenomenon of which he had scarcely 
heard, and he had not the least idea what it could 
be. He was hoeing corn that day in a solitary 
place. When the darkness and the chill of the 
eclipse fell upon the earth, feeling sure the day of 



82 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

judgment had come, he was terrified beyond descrip- 
tion. He watched the sun disappearing with the 
deepest apprehension, and felt no relief until it 
shone out bright and warm as before. 

It seems strange that people in a Christian coun- 
try could have had a good steady boy like this in 
their house and yet do nothing to cheer or comfort 
his life. Old men tell me it was a very common 
case in New England seventy years ago. 

This hard experience on the farm lasted until he 
was old enough to be apprenticed. At fourteen he 
was bound to a carpenter for seven years, during 
which he was to receive for his services his board 
and his clothes. Already he had done almost the 
work of a man on the farm, being a stout, handy 
fellow, and in the course of two or three years he 
did the work of a full-grown carpenter : neverthe- 
less, he received no wages except the necessaries of 
life. Fortunately the carpenter's family were hu- 
man beings, and he had a pleasant, friendly home 
during his apprenticeship. 

Even under the gentlest masters apprentices, in 
old times, were kept most strictly to their duty. 
They were lucky if they got the whole of Thanks- 
giving and the Fourth of July for holidays. 

Now, this apprentice, when he was sixteen, was 
so homesick on a certain occasion that he felt he 
m,ust go and see his mother, who lived near her old 
home, twenty miles from where he was working on 
a job. He walked the distance in the night, in 



CHAUNCEY JEROME. 83 

order not to rob his master of any of the time due 
to him. 

It was a terrible night's work. He was sorry he 
had undertaken it ; but having started he could not 
bear to give it up. Half the way was through the 
woods, and every noise he heard he thought was a 
wild beast coming to kill him, and even the piercing 
notes of the whippoorwill made his hair stand on 
end. When he passed a house the dogs were after 
him in full cry, and he spent the whole night in ter- 
ror. Let us hope the caresses of his mother com- 
pensated him for this suffering. 

The next year when his master had a job thirty 
miles distant, he frequently walked the distance on 
a hot summer's day, with his carpenter's tools upon 
his back. At that time light vehicles, or any kind 
of one-horse carriage, were very rarely kept in coun- 
try places, and mechanics generally had to trudge 
to their place of work, carrying their tools with 
them. So passed the first years of his apprentice- 
ship. 

All this time he was thinking of quite another 
business, — that of clock-making, — which had been 
developed during his childhood near his father's 
house, by Eli Terry, the founder of the Yankee 
wooden-clock manufacture. 

This ingenious Mr. Terry, with a small saw and 
a jack-knife, would cut out the wheels and works 
for twenty-five clocks during the winter, and, when 
the spring opened, he would sling three or four of 



84 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

them across the back of a horse, and keep going 
till he sold them, for about twenty-five dollars 
apiece. This was for the works only. When a 
farmer had bought the machinery of a clock for 
twenty-five dollars, he employed the village car- 
penter to make a case for it, which might cost ten 
or fifteen dollars more. 

It was in this simple way that the country was 
supplied with those tall, old-fashioned clocks, of 
which almost every ancient farm-house still con- 
tains a specimen. The clock-case was sometimes 
built into the house like a pillar, and helped to sup- 
port the upper story. Some of them were made 
by very clumsy workmen, out of the commonest 
timber, just planed in the roughest way, and con- 
tained wood enough for a pretty good-sized organ. 

The clock business had fascinated Chauncey Je- 
rome from his childhood, and he longed to work at 
it. His guardian dissuaded him. So many clocks 
were then making, he said, that in two or three 
years the whole country would be supplied, and 
then there would be no more business for a clock- 
maker. This was the general opinion. At a train- 
ing, one day, the boy overheard a gi:oup talking of 
Eli Terry's /bZ^y i^ undertaking to make two hun- 
dred clocks all at once. 

" He '11 never live long enough to finish them," 
said one. 

" If he should," said another, " he could not pos- 
sibly sell so many. The very idea is ridiculous." 



CHAUNCEY JEROME. 85 

The boy was not convinced by these wise men of 
the East, and he lived to make and to sell two 
hundred thousand clocks in one year ! 

When his apprenticeship was a little more than 
half over, he told his master that if he would give 
him four months in the winter of each year, when 
business was dull, he would buy his own clothes. 
His master consenting, he went to Waterbury, Con- 
necticut, and began to work making clock dials, 
and very soon got an insight into the art and mys- 
tery of clock-making. 

The clock-makers of that day, who carried round 
their clock-movements upon a horse's back, often 
found it difficult to sell them in remote country 
places, because there was no carpenter near by 
competent to make a case. Two smart Yankees 
hired our apprentice to go with them to the distant 
State of New Jersey, for the express purpose of 
making cases for the clocks they sold. On this 
journey he first saw the city of New York. He 
was perfectly astonished at the bustle and confu- 
sion. He stood on the corner of Chatham and 
Pearl Streets for more than an hour, wondering 
why so many people were hurrying about so in 
every direction. 

" What is going on ? " said he, to a passer-by. 
" What 's the excitement about ? " 

The man hurried on without noticing him ; which 
led him to conclude that city people were not over 
polite. 



86 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

The workmen were just finishing the interior of 
the City Hall, and he was greatly puzzled to lui- 
derstand how those winding stone stairs could be 
fixed without any visible means of support. In 
New Jersey he found another wonder. The people 
there kept Christmas more strictly than Sunday ; 
a thing very strange to a child of the Puritans, who 
hardly knew what Christmas was. 

Every winter added something to his knowledge 
of clock-making, and, soon after he was out of his 
apprenticeship, he bought some portions of clocks, 
a little mahogany, and began to put clocks together 
on his own account, with encouraging success from 
the beginning. 

It was a great day with him when he received 
his first magnificent order from a Southern mer- 
chant for twelve wooden clocks at twelve dollars 
apiece ! When they were done, he delivered them 
himself to his customer, and found it impossible to 
believe that he should actually receive so vast a 
sum as a hundred and forty-four dollars. He took 
the money with a trembling hand, and buttoned it 
up in his pocket. Then he felt an awful appre- 
hension that some robbers might have heard of his 
expecting to receive this enormous amount, and 
would waylay him on the road home. 

He worked but "too steadily. He used to say 
that he loved to work as well as he did to eat, and 
that sometimes he would not go outside of his gate 
from one Sunday to the next. He soon began to 



CHAUNCEY JEROME. 87 

make inventions and improvements. His business 
rapidly increased, tliough occasionally he had heavy 
losses and misfortunes. 

His most important contribution to the business 
of clock-making was his substitution of brass for 
wood in the cheap clocks. He found that his 
wooden clocks, when they were transported by sea, 
were often spoiled by the swelling of the wooden 
wheels. One night, in a moment of extreme de- 
pression during the panic of 1837, the thought 
darted into his mind, — 

" A cheap clock can be made of brass as well as 
wood ! " 

It kept him awake nearly all night. He began 
at once to carry out the idea. It gave an immense 
development to the business, because brass clocks 
could be exported to all parts of the world, and the 
cost of making them was greatly lessened by new 
machinery. It was Chauncey Jerome who learned 
how to make a pretty good brass clock for forty 
cents, and a good one for two dollars ; and it was 
he who began their exportation to foreign lands. 
Clocks of his making ticked during his lifetime at 
Jerusalem, Saint Helena, Calcutta, Honolulu, and 
most of the other ends of the earth. 

After making millions of clocks, and acquiring 
a large fortune, he retired from active business, 
leaving his splendid manufactory at New Haven 
to the management of others. They thought they 
knew more than the old man; they mismanaged 



88 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

tte business terribly, and involved him in their 
own ruin. He was obliged to leave his beautiful 
home at seventy years of age, and seek employment 
at weekly wages — he who had given employment 
to three hundred men at once. 

He scorned to be dependent. I saw and talked 
long with this good old man when he was working 
upon a salary, at the age of seventy-three, as super- 
intendent of a large clock factory in Chicago. He 
did not pretend to be indifferent to the change in 
his position. He felt it acutely. He was proud 
of the splendid business he had created, and he 
lamented its destruction. He said it was one of his 
consolations to know that, in the course of his long 
life, he had never brought upon others the pains 
he was then enduring. He bore his misfortunes 
as a man should, and enjoyed the confidence and 
esteem of his new associates. 



CAPTAIN PIEREE LACLEDE LIGUEST, 

PIONEER. 



The bridge which springs so lightly and so 
gracefully over the Mississippi at St. Louis is a 
truly wonderful structure. It often happens in this 
world that the work which is done best conceals 
the merit of the worker. All is finished so thor- 
oughly and smoothly, and fulfills its purpose with so 
little jar and friction, that the difficulties overcome 
by the engineer become almost incredible. No one 
would suppose, while looking down upon the three 
steel arches of this exquisite bridge, that its foun- 
dations are one hundred and twenty feet below the 
surface of the water, and that its construction cost 
nine millions of dollars and six years of time. Its 
great height above the river is also completely con- 
cealed by the breadth of its span. The largest 
steamboat on the river passes under it at the high- 
est stage of water, and yet the curve of the arches 
appears to have been selected merely for its picto- 
rial effect. 

It is indeed a noble and admirable work, an 
honor to the city and country, and, above all, to 



90 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Captain James B. Eads, who designed and con- 
structed it. The spectator who sees for the first 
time St. Louis, now covering as far as the eye can 
reach the great bend of the river on which it is 
built, the shore fringed with steamboats puffing 
black smoke, and the city glittering in the morning 
sun, beholds one of the most striking and animat- 
ing spectacles which this continent affords. 

Go back one hundred and twenty years. That 
bend was then covered with the primeval forest, 
and the only object upon it which betrayed the 
hand of man was a huge green mound, a hundred 
feet high, that had been thrown up ages before by 
some tribe which inhabited the spot before our In- 
dians had appeared. All that region swarmed with 
fur-bearing animals, deer, bear, buffalo, and beaver. 
It is difficult to see how this continent ever could 
have been settled but for the fur trade. It was 
beaver skin which enabled the Pilgrim Fathers of 
New England to hold their own during the first 
fifty years of their settlement. It was in quest of 
furs that the pioneers pushed westward, and it was 
by the sale of furs that the frontier settlers were at 
first supplied with arms, ammunition, tools, and salt. 

The fur trade also led to the founding of St. 
Louis. In the year 1763 a great fleet of heavy 
batteaux, loaded with the rude merchandise needed 
by trappers and Indians, approached the spot on 
which St. Louis stands. This fleet had made its 
way up the Mississippi with enormous difficulty and 



CAPTAIN PIERRE LACLEDE LIGUEST. 91 

toil from New Orleans, and only reached the mouth 
of the Missouri at the end of the fourth month. It 
was commanded by Pierre Laclede Liguest, the 
chief partner in a company chartered to trad^ 
with the Indians of the Missouri River. He was a 
Frenchman, a man of great energy and executive 
force, and his company of hunters, trappers, me- 
chanics, and farmers, were also French. 

On his way up the river Captain Liguest had 
noticed this superb bend of land, high enough 
above the water to avoid the floods, and its surface 
only undulating enough for the purposes of a settle- 
ment. Having reached the mouth of the Muddy 
River (as they called the Missouri) in the month 
of December, and finding no place there well suited 
to his purpose, he dropped down the stream seven- 
teen miles, and drove the prows of his boats into 
what is now the Levee of St. Louis. It was too 
late in the season to begin a settlement. But he 
*' blazed " the trees to mark the spot, and he said 
to a young man of his company, Auguste Chou- 
teau : — 

" You will come here as soon as the river is free 
from ice, and will cause this place to be cleared, 
and form a settlement according to the plan I shall 



give 



you. 



The fleet fell down the river to the nearest 
French settlement, Fort de Chartres. Captain Li- 
guest said to the commander of this fort on arriv- 
ing : — 



92 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

" I have found a situation where I intend to es- 
tablish a settlement which in the future will be- 
come one of the most beautiful cities in America." 

These are not imaginary words. Auguste Chou- 
teau, who was selected to form the settlement, kept 
a diary, part of which is now preserved in the Mer- 
cantile Library at St. Louis, and in it this say- 
ing of Captain Liguest is recorded. So, the next 
spring he dispatched young Chouteau with a select 
body of thirty mechanics and hunters to the site of 
the proposed settlement. 

" You will go," said he, " and disembark at the 
place where we marked the trees. You will begin 
to clear the place and build a large shed to contain 
the provisions and tools and some little cabins to 
lodge the men." 

On the fifteenth of February, 1764, the party 
arrived, and the next morning began to build their 
shed. Liguest named the settlement St. Louis, in 
honor of the patron saint of the royal house of 
France — Louis XV. being then upon the throne. 
All went well with the settlement, and it soon 
became the seat of the fur trade for an immense 
region of country, extending gradually from the 
Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains. 

The French lived more peacefully with the In- 
dians than any other people who assisted to settle 
this continent, and the reason appears to have been 
that they became almost Indian themselves. They 
built their huts in the wigwam fashion, with poles 



CAPTAIN PIERRE LACLEDE LI GUEST. 93 

stuck in the ground. They imitated the ways and 
customs of the Indians, both in living and in hunt- 
ing. They went on hunting expeditions with In- 
dians, wore the same garments, and learned to live 
on meat only, as Indian hunting parties generally 
did. But the circumstance which most endeared 
the French to the Indians was their marrying the 
daughters of the chiefs, which made the Indians 
regard them as belonging to their tribe. Besides 
this, they accommodated themselves to the Indian 
character, and learned how to please them. A St. 
Louis fur trader, who was living a few years ago in 
the ninetieth year of his age, used to speak of the 
ease with which an influential chief could be con- 
ciliated. 

" I could always," said he, " make the principal 
chief of a tribe my friend by a piece of vermilion, 
a pocket looking-glass, some flashy-looking beads, 
and a knife. These things made him a puppet in 
my hands." 

Even if a valuable horse had been stolen, a chief, 
whose friendship had been won in this manner, 
would continue to scold the tribe until the horse 
was brought back. The Indians, too, were de- 
lighted with the Frenchman's fiddle, his dancing, 
his gayety of manner, and even with the bright 
pageantry of his religion. It was when the settle- 
ment was six years old that the inhabitants of St. 
Louis, a very few hundreds in number, gathered to 
take part in the consecration of a little church, 



94 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

made very much like the great council wigwam of 
the Indians, the logs being placed upright, and the 
interstices filled with mortar. This church stood 
near the river, almost on the very site of the pres- 
ent cathedral. Mass was said, and the Te Deum 
was chanted. At the first laying out of the village. 
Captain Lig-uest set apart the whole block as a site 
for the church, and it remains church property to 
this day. 

It is evident from Chouteau's diary that Pierre 
Laclede Liguest, though he had able and energetic 
assistants, was the soul of the enterprise, and the 
real founder of St. Louis. He was one of that 
stock of Frenchmen who put the imprint of their 
nation, never to be effaced, upon the map of North 
America — a kind of Frenchman unspeakably dif- 
ferent from those who figured in the comic opera 
and the masquerade ball of the late corrupt and 
effeminating empire. He was a genial and gener- 
ous man, who rewarded his followers bountifully, 
and took the lead in every service of difficulty and 
danger. While on a visit to New Orleans he died 
of one of the diseases of the country, and was buried 
on the shore near the mouth of the Arkansas River. 

His executor and chief assistant, Auguste Chou- 
teau, born at New Orleans in 1739, lived one hun- 
dred years, not dying till 1839. There are many 
people in St. Louis who remember him. A very 
remarkable coincidence was, that his brother, Pierre 
Chouteau, born in New Orleans in 1749, died in 



CAPTAIN PIERRE LACLEDE LI GUEST. 95 

St. Louis in 1849, having also lived just one hun- 
dred years. Both of these brothers were identified 
with St. Louis from the beginning, where they 
lived in affluence and honor for seventy years, and 
where their descendants still reside. 

The growth of St. Louis was long retarded by 
the narrowness and tyranny of the Spanish govern- 
ment, to which the French ceded the country about 
the time when St. Louis was settled. But in 1804 
it was transferred to the United States, and from 
that time its progress has been rapid and almost 
uninterrupted. When President Jefferson's agent 
took possession, there was no post-office, no ferry 
over the river, no newspaper, no hotel, no Protestant 
church, and no school. Nor could any one hold 
land who was not a Catholic. Instantly, and as a 
matter of course, all restricting laws were swept 
away ; and before two years had passed there was 
a ferry, a post-office, a newspaper, a Protestant 
church, a hotel, and two schools, one French and 
one English. 



ISEAEL PUTNAM. 



It is strange tliat so straightforward and trans- 
parent a character as " Old Put " should have be- 
come the subject of controversy. Too much is 
claimed for him by some disputants, and much too 
little is conceded to him by others. He was cer- 
tainly as far from being a rustic booby as he was 
from being a great general. 

Conceive him, first, as a thriving, vigorous, enter- 
prising Connecticut farmer, thirty years of age, 
cultivating with great success his own farm of five 
hundred and fourteen acres, all paid for. Himself 
one of a family of twelve children, and belonging to 
a prolific race which has scattered Putnams all over 
the United States, besides leaving an extraordinary 
number in New England, he had married young at 
his native Salem, and established himself soon after 
in the northeastern corner of Connecticut. At that 
period, 1740, Connecticut was to Massachusetts what 
Colorado is to New York at present ; and thither, 
accordingly, this vigorous young man and his young 
wife early removed, and hewed out a farm from the 
primeval woods. 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 97 

He was just the man for a pioneer. His strength 
of body was extraordinary, and lie had a power of 
sustained exertion more valuable even than great 
strength. Nothing is more certain than that he 
was an enterprising and successful farmer, who in- 
troduced new fruits, better breeds of cattle, and 
improved implements. 

There is still to be seen on his farm a long ave- 
nue of ancient apple trees, which, the old men of 
the neighborhood affirm, were set out by Israel Put- 
nam one hundred and forty years ago. The well 
which he dug is still used. Coming to the place 
with considerable property inherited from his father 
(for the Putnams were a thriving race from the be- 
ginning), it is not surprising that he should have 
become one of the leading farmers in a county of 
farmers. 

At the same time he was not a studious man, and 
had no taste for intellectual enjoyments. He was 
not then a member of the church. He never served 
upon the school committee. There was a Library 
Association at the next village, but he did not be- 
long to it. For bold riding, skillful hunting, wood- 
chopping, hay-tossing, ploughing, it was hard to 
find his equal ; but, in the matter of learning, he 
could write legibly, read well enough, spell in an 
independent manner, and not much more. 

With regard to the wolf story, which rests upon 
tradition only, it is not improbable, and there is no 
good reason to doubt it. Similar deeds have been 



98 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

done by brave backwoodsmen from the beginning, 
and are still done within the boundaries of the 
United States every year. The story goes, that 
when he had been about two years on his new farm, 
the report was brought in one morning that a noted 
she- wolf of the neighborhood had killed seventy of 
his sheep and goats, besides wounding many lambs 
and kids. This wolf, the last of her race in that 
region, had long eluded th« skill of every hunter. 
Upon seeing the slaughter of his flock, the young 
farmer, it appears, entered into a compact with five 
of his neighbors to hunt the pernicious creature by 
turns until they had killed her. The animal was at 
length tracked to her den, a cave' extending deep 
into a rocky hill. The tradition is, that Putnam, 
with a rope around his body, a torch in one hand, 
and rifle in the other, went twice into the cave, and 
the second time shot the wolf dead, and was drawn 
out by the people, woK and all. An exploit of this 
nature gave great celebrity in an outlying county 
in the year 1742. Meanwhile he continued to 
thrive, and one of the old-fashioned New England 
families of ten children gathered about him. As 
they grew towards maturity, he bought a share in 
the Library Association, built a pew for his family 
in the church, and comported himself in all ways as 
became a prosperous farmer and father of a numer- 
ous family. 

So passed his life until he reached the age of 
thirty-seven, when he already had a boy fifteen years 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 99 

of age, and was rich in all the wealth which Con- 
necticut then possessed. The French war broke 
out — the war which decided the question whether 
the French or the English race should possess North 
America. His reputation was such that the legisla- 
ture of Connecticut appointed him at once a captain, 
and he had no difficulty in enlisting a company of 
the young men of his county, young farmers or the 
sons of farmers. He gained great note as a scouter 
and ranger, rendering such important service in 
this way to the army that the legislature made him 
a special grant of " fifty Spanish milled dollars " 
as an honorable gift. He was famous also for 
Yankee ingenuity. A colonial newspaper relates 
an anecdote illustrative of this. The British gen- 
eral was sorely perplexed by the presence of a 
French man-of-war commanding a piece of water 
which it was necessary for him to cross. 

" General," said Putnam, " that ship must be 
taken." 

" Aye," replied the general, " I would give the 
world if she was taken." 

" I will take her," said Putnam. 

" How ? " asked the general. 

" Give me some wedges, a beetle, and a few men 
of my own choice." 

When night came, Putnam rowed under the ves- 
sel's stern, and drove the wedges between the rud- 
der and the ship. In the morning she was seen 
with her sails flapping helplessly in the middle of 



100 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

the lake, and she was soon after blown ashore and 
captured. 

Among other adventures, Putnam was taken 
prisoner by the Indians, and carried to his grave 
great scars of the wounds inflicted by the savages. 
He served to the very end of the war, pursuing the 
enemy even into the tropics, and assisting at the 
capture of Havana. He returned home, after nine 
years of almost continuous service, with the rank 
of colonel, and such a reputation as made him the 
hero of Connecticut, as Washington was the hero 
of Virginia at the close of the same war. At any 
time of public danger requiring a resort to arms, 
he would be naturally looked to by the people of 
Connecticut to take the command. 

Eleven peaceful years he now spent at home. 
His wife died, leaving an infant a year old. He 
joined the church ; he married again ; he cultivated 
his farm ; he told his war stories. The Stamp Act 
excitement occurred in 1765, when Putnam joined 
the Sons of Liberty, and called upon the governor 
of the colony as a deputy from them. 

" What shall I do," asked the governor, " if the 
stamped paper should be sent to me by the king's 
authority ? " 

" Lock it up," said Putnam, " until we visit you 
again." 

" And what will you do with it ? " 

" We shall expect you to give us the key of the 
room where it is deposited; and if you think fit, 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 101 

in order to screen yourself from blame, you may 
forewarn us upon our peril not to enter' the room." 

" And what will you do afterwards ? " 

" Send it safely back again." 

" But if I should refuse you admission ? " 

" Your house will be level with the dust in five 
minutes." 

Fortunately, the stamped paper never reached 
Connecticut, and the act was repealed soon after. 

The eventful year, 1774, arrived. Putnam was 
fifty-six years of age, a somewhat portly personage, 
weighing two hundred pounds, with a round, full 
countenance, adorned by curly locks, now turning 
gray — the very picture of a hale, hearty, good- 
humored, upright and downright country gentle- 
man. News came that the port of Boston was 
closed, its business suspended, its people likely to 
be in want of food. The farmers of the neighbor- 
hood contributed a hundred and twenty-five sheep, 
which Putnam himself drove to Boston, sixty miles 
off, where he had a cordial reception by the people, 
and was visited by great numbers of them at the 
house of Dr. Warren, where he lived. The polite 
people of Boston were delighted, with the scarred 
old hero, and were pleased to tell anecdotes of his 
homely ways and fervent, honest zeal. He mingled 
freely, too, with the British officers, who chaffed 
him, as the modern saying is, about his coming 
down to Boston to fight. They told him that 
twenty great ships and twenty regiments would 
come unless the people submitted. 



102 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

" If they come," said Putnam, " I am ready to 
treat them, as enemies." 

One day in the following spring, April twentieth, 
while he was ploughing in one of his fields with a 
yoke of oxen driven by his son, Daniel, a boy of 
fifteen, an express reached him giving him the 
news of the battle of Lexington, which had oc- 
curred the day before. Daniel Putnam has left a 
record of what his father did on this occasion. 

" He loitered not," wrote Daniel , " but left me, 
the driver of his team, to unyoke it in the furrow, 
and not many days after to follow him to camp." 

Colonel Putnam moimted a horse, and set off in- 
stantly to alarm the officers of militia in the neigh- 
boring towns. Returning home a few hours after, 
he found hundreds of minute-men assembled, armed 
and equipped, who had chosen him for their com- 
mander. He accepted the command, and, giving 
them orders to follow, he pushed on without dis- 
mounting, rode the same horse all night, and 
reached Cambridge next morning at sunrise, still 
wearing the checked shirt which he had had on 
when ploughing in his field. As Mr. Bancroft 
remarks, he brought to his country's service an 
undaunted courage and a devoted heart. His ser- 
vices during the Revolution are known to almost 
every reader. Every one seems to have liked him, 
for he had a very happy turn for humor, sang a 
good song, and was a very cheerful old gentleman. 

In 1789, after four years of vigorous and useful 



ISRAEL PUTNAM. 103 

service, too arduous for his age, he suffered a par- 
alytic stroke, which obliged him to leave the army. 
He lived, however, to see his country free and 
prosperous, surviving to the year 1790, when he 
died, aged seventy-three. I saw his commission 
as major-general hanging in the house of one of 
his grandsons, Colonel A. P. Putnam, at Nash- 
ville, some years ago. He has descendants in 
every State. 



GEORGE FLOWER. 

PIONEER. 



Tkavelers from old Europe are surprised to 
find in Chicago such an institution as an Historical 
Society. What can a city of yesterday, they ask, 
find to place in its archives, beyond the names of 
the first settlers, and the erection of the first eleva- 
tor ? They forget that the newest settlement of 
civilized men inherits and possesses the whole past 
of our race, and that no community has so much 
need to be instructed by History as one which has 
little of its own. Nor is it amiss for a new com- 
monwealth to record its history as it makes it, and 
store away the records of its vigorous infancy for 
the entertainment of its mature age. 

The first volume issued by the Chicago Historical 
Society contains an account of what is still called 
the "English Settlement," in Edwards County, Il- 
linois, founded in 1817 by two wealthy English 
farmers, Morris Birkbeck and George Flower. 
These gentlemen sold out all their possessions in 
England, and set out in search of the prairies of 
the Great West, of which they had heard in the 



GEORGE FLOWER. 105 

old country. They were not quite sure there were 
any prairies, for all the settled parts of the United 
States, they knew, had been covered with the dense 
primeval forest. The existence of the prairies 
rested upon the tales of travelers. So George 
Flower, in the spring of 1816, set out in advance 
to verify the story, bearing valuable letters of in- 
troduction, one from General La Fayette to ex- 
President Jefferson. 

With plenty of money in his pocket and enjoy- 
ing every other advantage, he was nearly two years 
in merely Jindi?ig the prairies. First, he was fifty 
days in crossing the ocean, and he spent six weeks 
in Philadelpliia, enjoying the hospitality of friends. 
The fourth month of his journey had nearly elapsed 
before he had fairly mounted his horse and started 
on his westward way. 

It is a pity there is not another new continent to 
be explored and settled, because the experience 
gained in America would so much facilitate the 
work. Upon looking over such records as that of 
George Flower's History we frequently meet with 
devices and expedients of great value in their time 
and place, but which are destined soon to be num- 
bered among the Lost Arts. For example, take 
the mode of saddling and loading a horse for a ride 
of fifteen hundred miles, say, from the Atlantic to 
the Far West, or back again. It was a matter of 
infinite importance to the rider, for every part 
of the load was subjected to desperate pulls and 



106 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

wrenches, and the breaking of a strap, at a critical 
moment in crossing a river or climbing a steep, 
might precipitate both horse and rider to destruc- 
tion. 

On the back of the horse was laid, first of all, a 
soft and thin blanket, which protected the animal 
in some degree against the venomous insects that 
abounded on the prairies, the attacks of which 
could sometimes madden the gentlest horse. Upon 
this was placed the saddle, which was large, and 
provided in front with a high pommel, and behind 
with a pad to receive part of the lading. The 
saddle was a matter of great importance, as well 
as its girths and crupper strap, all of which an 
experienced traveler subjected to most careful ex- 
amination. Every stitch was looked at, and the 
strength of all the parts repeatedly tested. 

Over the saddle — folded twice, if not three 
times — was a large, thick, and fine blanket, as 
good a one as the rider could afford, which was 
kept in its place by a broad surcingle. On the pad 
behind the saddle were securely fastened a cloak 
and umbrella, rolled together as tight as possible 
and bound with two straps. Next we have to con- 
sider the saddle bags, stuffed as full as they could 
hold, each bag being exactly of the same weight 
and size as the other. As the horseman put into 
them the few articles of necessity which they woidd 
hold he would balance them frequently, to see that 
one did not outweigh the other even by half a 



GEORGE FLOWER. 107 

pound. If this were neglected, the bags would slip 
from one side to the other, graze the horse's leg, 
and start him off in a *■' furious kicking gallop." 
The saddle-bags were slung across the saddle under 
the blanket, and kept in their place by two loops 
through which the stirrup leathers passed. 

So much for the horse. The next thing was for 
the rider to put on his leggings, which were pieces 
of cloth about a yard square, folded round the leg 
from the knee to the ankle, and fastened with pins 
and bands of tape. These leggings received the 
mud and water splashed up by the horse, and kept 
the trousers dry. Thus prepared, the rider pro- 
ceeded to mount, which was by no means an easy 
matter, considering what was already upon the 
horse's back. The horse was placed as near as 
possible to a stump, from which, with a " pretty 
wide stride and fling of the leg," the rider would 
spring into his seat. It was so difficult to mount 
and dismount, that experienced travelers would sel- 
dom get off until the party halted for noon, and 
not again until it was time to camp. 

Women often made the journey on horseback, 
and bore the fatigue of it about as well as men. 
Instead of a riding-habit, they wore over their or- 
dinary dress a long skirt of dark-colored material, 
and tied their bonnets on with a large handker- 
chief over the top, which served to protect the face 
and ears from the weather. 

The packing of the saddle made the seat more 



108 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

comfortable, and even safer, for both men and 
women. The rider, in fact, was seldom thrown 
unless the whole load came off at once. Thus 
mounted, a party of experienced horsemen and 
horsewomen would average their thirty miles a day 
for a month at a time, providing no accident befel 
them. They were, nevertheless, liable to many ac- 
cidents and vexatious delays. A horse falling lame 
would delay the party. Occasionally there would 
be a stampede of all the horses, and days lost in 
finding them. 

The greatest, difficulty of all was the overflowing 
waters. No reader can have forgotten the floods 
in the western country in the spring of 1884, when 
every brook was a torrent and every river a deluge. 
Imagine a party of travelers making their west- 
ward way on horseback at such a time, before there 
was even a raft ferry on any river west of the Alle- 
ghanies, and when all the valleys would be covered 
with water. It was by no means unusual for a 
party to be detained a month waiting for the waters 
of a large river to subside, and it was a thing at 
some seasons of daily occurrence for all of them to 
be soused up to their necks in water. 

Many of the important fords, too, could only be 
crossed by people who knew their secret. I received 
once myself directions for crossing a ford in South 
Carolina something like this : I was told to go 
straight in four lengths of the horse ; then " turn 
square to the right " and go two lengths ; and finally 



GEORGE FLOWER. 109 

"strike for the shore, slanting a little down the 
stream." Luckily, I had some one with me more 
expert in fords than I was, and through his friendly 
guidance managed to flounder through. 

Between New York and Baltimore, in 1775, 
there were more than twenty streams to be forded, 
and six wide rivers or inlets to be ferried over. 
We little think, as we glide over these streams now, 
that the smallest of them, in some seasons, presented 
difficulties to our grandfathers going southward on 
horseback. 

The art of camping out was wonderfully well un- 
derstood by the early pioneers. Women were a 
great help in making the camp comfortable. As 
the Pilgrim Fathers may be said to have discovered 
the true method of settling the sea-shore, so the 
Western pioneer fomid the best way of traversing 
and subduing the interior wilderness. The secret 
in both cases was to get the aid of iDomen and chil- 
dren! They supplied men with motive, did a full 
half of the labor, and made it next to im]30ssible 
to turn back. Mr. Flower makes a remark in con- 
nection with this subject, the truth of which will 
be attested by many. 

" It is astonishing," he says, " how soon we are 
restored from fatigue caused by exercise in the open 
air. Debility is of much longer duration from labor 
in factories, stores, and in rooms warmed by stoves. 
Hail, snow, thunder storms, and drenching rains are 
all restoratives to health and spirits." 



110 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Often, when the company would be all but tired 
out by a long day's ride in hot weather, and the 
line stretched out three or four miles, a good soak- 
ing rain would restore their spirits at once. Nor 
did a plunge into the stream, which would wet every 
fibre of their clothing, do them any harm. They 
would ride on in the sun, and let their clothes dry 
in the natural way. 

It must be owned, however, that some of the win- 
ter experiences of travelers in the prairie country 
were most severe. In the forest a fire can be made 
and some shelter can be found. But imagine a 
party on the prairie in the midst of a driving snow- 
storm, overtaken by night, the temperature at zero. 
Even in these circumstances knowledge was safety. 
Each man would place his saddle on the ground 
and sit upon it, covering his shoulders and head 
with his blanket, and holding his horse by the 
bridle. In this way the human travelers usually 
derived warmth and shelter enough from the horses 
to keep them from freezing to death. Another 
method was to tie their horses, spread a blanket on 
the ground, and sit upon it as close together as they 
could. 

Sometimes, indeed, a whole party' would freeze 
together in a mass; but commonly all escaped 
without serious injury, and in some instances in- 
valids were restored to health by exposure which 
we should imagine would kill a healthy man. 

When George Flower rode westward in 1816, 



GEORGE FLOWER. Ill 

Lancaster, Pa., was the largest inland town of tlie 
United States, and Dr. Priestley's beautiful abode 
at Sunbury on the Susquehanna was still on the 
outside of the " Far West." He had more trouble 
in getting to Pittsburg than he would now have in 
going round the world. In the Alleghany Moun- 
tains he lost his way, and was rescued by the chance 
of finding a stray horse which he caught and mount- 
ed, and was carried by it to the only cabin in the 
region. The owner of this cabin was " a poor Irish- 
man with a coat so darned, patched, and tattered as 
to be quite a curiosity." 

" How I cherished him ! " says the traveler. 
"No angel's visit could have pleased me so well. 
He pointed out to me the course and showed me 
into a path." 

Pittsburg was already a smoky town. Leaving 
it soon, he rode on westward to Cincinnati, then a 
place of five or six thousand inhabitants, but grow- 
ing rapidly. Even so far west as Cincinnati he 
could still learn nothing of the prairies. 

" Not a person that I saw," he declares, " knew 
anything about them. I shrank from the idea of 
settling in the midst of a wood of heavy timber, to 
hack and to hew my way to a little farm, ever 
bovTuded by a wall of gloomy forest. " 

Then he rode across Kentucky, where he was 
struck, as every one was and is, by the luxuriant 
beauty of the blue-grass farms. He dwells upon 
the difficulty and horror of fording the rivers at 



112 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

that season of the year. Some of his narrow es- 
capes made such a deep impression upon his mind 
that he used to dream of them fifty years after. He 
paid a visit to old Governor Shelby of warlike re- 
nown, one of the heroes of the frontier, and there 
at last he got some news of the prairies ! He says i 

" It was at Governor Shelby's house (in Lincoln 
Countj'^, Ky.) that I met the first person who con- 
firmed me in the existence of the prairies." 

This informant was the Governor's brother, who 
had just come from the Mississippi River across the 
glorious prairies of Illinois to the Ohio. The infor- 
mation was a great relief. He was sure now that 
he had left his native land on no fool's errand, the 
victim of a traveler's lying tale. Being thus satis- 
fied that there were prairies which could be found 
whenever they were wanted, he suspended the pur- 
suit. 

He had been then seven months from home, and 
November being at hand, too late to explore an un- 
known country, he changed his course, and went off 
to visit Mr. Jefferson at his estate of Poplar Forest 
in Virginia, upon which the Natural Bridge is situ- 
ated. Passing through Nashville on his way, he 
saw General Andrew Jackson at a horse race. He 
describes the hero of New Orleans as an elderly 
man, " lean and lank, bronzed in complexion, deep 
marked countenance, grisly-gray hair, and a rest- 
less, fiery eye." He adds : — 

" Jackson had a horse on the course which was 



GEORGE FLOWER. 113 

beaten that clay. The recklessness of his bets, his 
violent gesticulations and imprecations, outdid all 
competition. If I had been told that he was to be 
a future President of the United States, I shoidd 
have thought it a very strange thing." 

There are still a few old men, I believe, at Nash- 
ville who remember General Jackson's demeanor 
on the race ground, and they confirm the record of 
Mr. Flower. After a ride of a thousand miles 
or so, he presented his letter of introduction to 
Mr. Jefferson at Poplar Forest, and had a cordial 
reception. The traveler describes the house as 
resembling a French chateau, with octagon rooms, 
doors of polished oak, lofty ceilings, and large 
mirrors. The ex-President's form, he says, was of 
somewhat majestic proportions, more than six feet 
in height ; his manners simple, kind, and polite ; his 
dress a dark pepper-and-salt coat, cut in the old 
Quaker fashion, with one row of large metal but- 
tons, knee-breeches, gray worsted stockings, and 
shoes fastened by large metal buckles, all quite 
in the old style. His two grand-daughters, Misses 
Randolph, were living with him then. Mr. Jeffer- 
son soon after returned to his usual abode, Monti- 
cello, and there Mr. Flower spent the greater part 
of the winter, enjoying most keenly the evening con- 
versations of the ex-President, who delighted to talk 
of the historic scenes in which he was for fifty years 
a conspicuous actor. 

George Flower and his party would have settled 



114 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

near Monticello, perhaps, but for the system of 
slavery, whicli perpetuated a wasteful mode of farm- 
ing, and disfigured the beautiful land with dilapi- 
dation. 

He had, meanwhile, sent home word that prairies 
existed in America, and in the spring of 1817 his 
partner in the enterprise, Morris Birkbeck, and his 
family of nine, came out from England, and they all 
started westward in search of the prairies. They 
went by stage to Pittsburg, where they bought 
horses, mounted them and continued their journey, 
men, ladies, and boys, a dozen people in all. The 
journey was not unpleasant, most of them being 
persons of educr.tion and refinement, with three 
agreeable young ladies among them, two of them 
being daughters of Mr. Birkbeck, and Miss An- 
drews, their friend and companion. 

All went well and happily during the journey 
until Mr. Birkbeck, a widower of fifty-four with 
grown daughters, made an offer of marriage to 
Miss Andrews, aged twenty-five. It was an embar- 
rassing situation. She was constrained to decline 
the offer, and as they were traveling in such close 
relations, the freedom and enjoyment of the journey 
were seriously impaired. Then Mr. Flower, who 
was a widower also, but in the prime of life, j)ro- 
posed to the yoimg lady. She accepted him, and 
they were soon after married at Vincennes, the re- 
jected Birkbeck officiating as father of the bride. 

But this was not finding the prairies. At length, 



GEORGE FLOWER. 115 

toward the close of the second summer, they began 
to meet with people who had seen prairies, and 
finally their own eyes were greeted with the sight. 
One day, after a ride of seven hours in extreme 
heat, bruised and torn by the brushwood, exhausted 
and almost in despair, suddenly a beautiful prairie 
was disclosed to their view. It was an immense ex- 
panse stretching away in profound repose beneath 
the light of an afternoon summer sun, surrounded 
by forest and adorned with clumps of mighty oaks, 
" the whole presenting a magnificence of park scen- 
ery complete from the hand of nature." The writer 
adds : " For once, the reality came up to the pic- 
ture of the imagination." 

If the reader supposes that their task was now 
substantially accomplished, he is very much mis- 
taken. After a good deal of laborious search, they 
chose a site for their settlement in Edwards County, 
Illinois, and bought a considerable tract; after 
which Mr. Flower went to England to close up the 
affairs of the two families, and raise the money to 
pay for their land and build their houses. They 
named their town Albion. It has enjoyed a safe 
and steady prosperity ever since, and has been in 
some respects a model town to that part of Illinois. 

The art of founding a town must of course soon 
cease to be practiced. It is curious to note how all 
the institutions of civilized life were established in 
their order. First was built a large log-cabin that 
would answer as a tavern and blacksmith's shop, 



116 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

the first requisites being to get the horses shod, 
and tlie riders supplied with whiskey. Then came 
other log-cabins, as they were needed, which pio- 
neers would undertake to build for arriving emi- 
grants for twenty-five dollars apiece. Very soon 
one of the people would try, for the first time in 
his life, to preach a sermon on Sundays, and as 
soon as there were children enough in the neighbor- 
hood, one of the settlers, unable to cope with the 
labors of agriculture, would undertake to teach 
them, and a log-cabin would be built or appropri- 
ated for the purpose. 

Mr. Flower reports that, as soon as the school 
was established, ci\dlization was safe. Some boys 
and some parents would hold out against it for a 
while, but aU of them at last either join the move- 
ment or remove further into the wilderness. 

" Occasionally," he says, " will be seen a boy, ten 
or twelve years old, leaning against a door-post in- 
tently gazing in upon the scholars at their lessons ; 
after a time he slowly and moodily goes away. He 
feels his exclusion. He can no longer say : ' I am 
as good as you.' He must go to school or dive 
deeper into the foi-est." 

All this is passing. Already it begins to read 
like ancient history. 

George Flower survived until March, 1862, when 
he died at a good old age. Certainly the Historical 
Society of Chicago has done well to publish the rec< 
ord he left behind him. 



EDWAED COLES, 



NOBLEST OF THE PIONEERS, AND HIS GREAT 
SPEECH. 



When James Madison came to the presidency in 
1809, lie followed the example of his predecessor, 
Mr. Jefferson, in the selection of his private sec- 
retary. Mr. Jefferson chose Captain Meriwether 
Lewis, the son of one of his Virginia neighbors, 
whom he had known from his childhood. Mr. 
Madison gave the appointment to Edward Coles, 
the son of a family friend of Albermarle County, 
Va., who had recently died, leaving a large estate 
in land and slaves to his children. 

Edward Coles, a graduate of William and Mary 
college, was twenty-three years of age when he en- 
tered the White House as a member of the Presi- 
dent's family. He was a young man after James 
Madison's own heart, of gentle manners, handsome 
person, and singular firmness of character. In the 
correspondence both of Jefferson and Madison sev- 
eral letters can be found addressed to him which 
show the very high estimation in which he was held 
by those eminent men. 



118 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Among the many young men who have held the 
place of private secretary in the presidential man- 
sion, Edward Coles was one of the most interest- 
ing. I know not which ought to rank highest in 
our esteem, the wise and gallant Lewis, who ex- 
plored for us the Western wilderness, or Edward 
Coles, one of the rare men who know how to sur- 
render, for conscience' sake, home, fortune, ease, 
and good repute. 

While he was still in college he became deej)ly 
interested in the question, whether men could right- 
fully hold property in men. At that time the best 
of the educated class at the South were still abo- 
litionists in a romantic or sentimental sense, just 
as Queen Marie Antoinette was a republican dur- 
ing the American Revolution. Here and there a 
young man like George Wythe had set free his 
slaves and gone into the profession of the law. 
With the gTeat majority, however, their disappro- 
val of slavery was only an affair of the intellect, 
which led to no practical residts. It was not such 
with Edward Coles. The moment you look at the 
portrait given in the recent sketch of his life by 
Mr. E. B. Washburne, you perceive that he was a 
person who might be slow to make "up his mind, 
but who, when he had once discovered the right 
course, could never again be at peace with himself 
until he had followed it. 

While at college he read everything on the sub' 
ject of slavery that fell in his way, and he studied 



EDWARD COLES. 119 

It in the light of the Declaration of Independence, 
which assured him that men are born free and 
equal and endowed with certain natural rights 
which are inalienable. He made up his mind, 
while he was still a student, that it was wrong to 
hold slaves, and he resolved that he would neither 
hold them nor live in a State which permitted 
slaves to be held. He was determined, however, 
to do nothing rashly. One reason which induced 
him to accept the place offered him by Mr. Madi- 
son was his desire of getting a knowledge of the 
remoter parts of the Union, in order to choose the 
place where he could settle his slaves most advanta- 
geously. 

While he was yet a member of the presidential 
household, he held that celebrated correspondence 
with Mr. Jefferson, in which he urged the ex-Pres- 
ident to devote the rest of his life to promoting the 
abolition of slavery. Mr. Jefferson replied that 
the task was too arduous for a man who had passed 
his seventieth year. It was like bidding old Priam 
buckle on the armor of Hector. 

" This enterprise,'" he added, " is for the young, 
for those who can follow it up and bear it through 
to its consummation. It shall have all my prayers 
and these are the only weapons of an old man. But, 
in the mean time, are you right in abandoning this 
property, and your coimtry with it ? I think not." 

Mr. Jefferson endeavored to dissuade the young 
man from his project of removal. Mr. Coles, how- 



120 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

ever, was not to be convinced. After serving for 
six years as private secretary, and ftdfiUing a spec- 
ial diplomatic mission to Russia, he withdrew to his 
ancestral home in Virginia, and prepared to lead 
forth his slaves to the State of Illinois, then re- 
cently admitted into the Union, )3ut still a scarcely 
broken expanse of virgin prairie. He could not law- 
fully emancipate his slaves in Virginia, and it was 
far from his purpose to turn them loose in the wil- 
derness. He was going with them, and to stay with 
them until they were well rooted in the new soil. 

All his friends and relations opposed his scheme ; 
nor had he even the approval of the slaves them- 
selves, for they knew nothing whatever of his inten- 
tion. He had been a good master, and they fol- 
lowed him with blind faith, supposing that he was 
merely going to remove, as they had seen other 
planters remove, from an exhausted soil to virgin 
lands. Placing his slaves in the charge of one of 
their number, a mulatto man who had already made 
the journey to lUinois with his master, he started 
them in wagons on their long journey in April, 
1819, over the Alleghany Mountains to a point 
on the Monongahela River. There he bought two 
large flat-bottomed boats, ujion which he embarked 
his whole company, with their horses, wagons, bag- 
gage, and implements. His pilot proving a drunk- 
ard, he was obliged to take the command himself, 
upon reaching Pittsburg. 

The morning after he left Pittsburg, a lovely 



EDWARD COLES. 121 

April day, he called all the negroes together on the 
deck of the boats, which were lashed together, and 
explained what he was going to do with them. He 
told them they were no longer slaves, bnt free peo- 
ple, free as he was, free to go on down the river 
with him, and free to go ashore, just as they 
pleased. He afterwards described the scene. " The 
effect on them," he wrote, " was electrical. They 
stared at me and at each other, as if doubting the 
accuracy or reality of what they heard. In breath- 
less silence they stood before me, unable to utter a 
word, but with countenances beaming with expres- 
sion which no words could convey, and which no 
language can now describe. As they began to see 
the truth of what they had heard, and to realize 
their situation, there came on a kind of hysterical, 
giggling laugh. After a pause of intense and un- 
utterable emotion, bathed in tears, and with tremu- 
lous voices, they gave vent to their gratitude, and 
implored the blessings of God on me. When they 
had in some degree recovered the command of 
themselves, Ealph said he had long known I was 
opposed to holding black people as slaves, and 
thought it probable I would some time or other 
give my people their freedom, but that he did not 
expect me to do it so soon ; and moreover, he 
thought I ought not to do it till they had repaid 
me the expense I had been at in removing them 
from Virginia, and had improved my farm and 
'gotten me well fixed in that new country.' To 



122 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

this all simultaneously expressed their concurrence, 
and their desire to remain with me, as my servants, 
until they had comfortably fixed me at my new 
home. 

" I told them, no. I had made up my mind to 
give to them immediate and unconditional free- 
dom ; that I had long been anxious to do it, but 
had been prevented by the delays, first in selling 
my property in Virginia, and then in collecting the 
money, and by other circumstances. That in con- 
sideration of this delay, and as a reward for their 
past services, as well as a stimulant to their future 
exertions, and with a hope it would add to their 
self-esteem and their standing in the estimation of 
others, I should give to each head of a family a 
quarter section, containing one hundred and sixty 
acres of land. To this all objected, saying I had 
done enough for them in giving them their free- 
dom ; and insisted on my keeping the land to sup- 
ply my own wants, and added, in the kindest man- 
ner, the expression of their solicitude that I would 
not have the means of doing so after I had freed 
them. I told them I had thought much of my 
duty and of their rights, and that it was due alike 
to both that I should do what I had said I should 
do ; and accordingly, soon after reaching Edwards- 
ville, I executed and delivered to them deeds to the 
lands promised them. 

" I stated to them that the lands I intended to 
give them were unimproved lands, and as thej; 



EDWARD COLES. 123 

would not have the means of making the necessary 
improvements, of stocking their farms, and procur- 
ing the materials for at once living on them, they 
would have to hire themselves out till they could 
acquire by their labor the necessary means to com- 
mence cultivating and residing on their own lands. 
That I was willing to hire and employ on my farm 
a certain number of them (designating the individ- 
uals) ; the others I advised to seek employment 
in St. Louis, Edwardsville, and other places, where 
smart, active young men and women could obtain 
much higher wages than they coxxld on farms. At 
this some of them murmured, as it indicated a par- 
tiality, they said, on my part to those designated to 
live with me ; and contended they should all be 
equally dear to me, and that I ought not to keep a 
part and turn the others out on the world, to be 
badly treated, etc. I reminded them of what they 
seemed to have lost sight of, that they were free ; 
that no one had a right to beat or ill-use them ; 
and if so treated they could at pleasure leave one 
place and seek a better ; that labor was much in 
demand in that new country, and highly paid for ; 
that there would be no difficulty in their obtaining 
good places, and being kindly treated ; but if not, 
I should be at hand, and would see they were well 
treated, and have justice done them. 

" I availed myself of the deck scene to give the 
negroes some advice. I dwelt long and with much 
earnestness on their future conduct and success, 



124 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

and my great anxiety that they should behave 
themselves and do well, not only for their own 
sakes, but for the sake of the black race held in 
bondage ; many of whom were thus held because 
their masters believed they were incompetent to 
take care of themselves and that liberty would be 
to them a curse rather than a blessing. My anx- 
ious wish was that they should so conduct them- 
selves as to show by their example that the de- 
scendants of Africa were competent to take care of 
and govern themselves, and enjoy all the blessings 
of liberty and all the other birthrights of man, 
and thus promote the universal emancipation of 
that unfortunate and outraged race of the human 
family." ^ 

After floating six hundred miles down the Ohio, 
they had another land journey into Illinois, where 
the master performed his promises, and created 
a home for himself. A few years after, he was 
elected governor of the State. It was during his 
term of three years that a most determined effort 
was made to change the constitution of the State 
so as to legalize slavery in it. It was chiefly through 
the firmness and masterly management of Governor 
Coles that this attempt was frustrated. 

When his purpose in moving to Illinois had been 
completely accomplished, he removed .to Philadel- 
phia, where he lived to the age of eighty -two. 

^ Sketch of Edward Coles. By E. B. Washburne. Chicago 
1882. 



EDWARD COLES. 125 

Though not again in public life, he was always a 
public-spirited citizen. He corresponded with the 
venerable Madison to the close of that good man's 
life. Mr. Madison wrote two long letters to him 
on public topics in his eighty-fourth year. Gov- 
ernor Coles died at Pliiladelphia in 1868, having 
lived to see slavery abolished in every State of the 
Union. 

I have been informed that few, if any, of his 
own slaves succeeded finally in farming prairie 
land, but that most of them gradually drifted to 
the towns, where they became waiters, barbers, por- 
ters, and domestic servants. My impression is that 
he over-estimated their capacity. But this does not 
diminish the moral sublimity of the experiment. 



PETEE H. BUENETT. 



When an aged bank president, who began life as 
a waiter in a backwoods tavern, tells the story of 
his life, we all like to gather close about him and 
listen to his tale. Peter H. Burnett, the first Gov- 
ernor of California, and now the President of the 
Pacific Bank in San Francisco, has recently related 
his history, or the " EecoUections of an Old Pio- 
neer ; " and if I were asked by the " intelligent 
foreigner " we often read about to explain the 
United States of to-day, I would hand him that 
book, and say : — 

" There ! That is the stuff of which America is 
made." 

He was born at Nashville, Tennessee, in 1807 ; 
his father a carpenter and farmer, an honest, 
strong-minded man, who built some, of the first 
log-houses and frame-houses of what was then the 
frontier village of Nashville, now a beautiful and 
pleasant city. While he was still a child the fam- 
ily removed to Missouri, then on the outer edge of 
civilization, and they spent the first winter in a 
hovel with a dirt floor, boarded up at the sides, and 



PETER H. BURNETT. 127 

with a hole in the middle of the roof for the escape 
of the smoke. All the family lived together in 
the same room. In a year or two, of course, they 
had a better house, and a farm under some cultiva- 
tion. 

Those pioneer settlements were good schools for 
the development of the pioneer virtues, courage, 
fortitude, handiness, directness of speech and con- 
duct. Fancy a boy ten years old going on horse- 
back to mill through the woods, and having to wait 
at the mill one or two days and nights for his turn, 
living chiefly on a little parched corn which he car- 
ried with him, and bringing back the flour all 
right. 

" It often happened," says Governor Burnett, 
" that both bag and boy tumbled off, and then there 
was trouble ; not so much because the boy was a 
little hurt (for he would soon recover), but because 
it was difficult to get the bag on again." 

There was nothing for it but to wait until a man 
came along strong enough to shoulder three bushels 
of corn. Missouri was then, as it now is, a land of 
plenty ; for besides the produce of the farms, the 
country was full of game, and a good deal of money 
was gained by the traffic in skins, honey, and bees- 
wax. The simplicity of dress was such that a mer- 
chant attending church one day dressed in a suit 
of broadcloth, the aged preacher alluded to his 
" fine apparel," and condemned it as being contrary 
to the spirit of the Gospel. Fighting with fists was 



128 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

one of the chief amusements. At a training, some 
young bully would mount a stump, and after imi- 
tating the flapping and crowing of a cock, cry 
out: — 

" I can whip any man in this crowd except my 
friends." 

The challenge being accepted, the two combat- 
ants would fight until one of them cried, Enough ; 
whereupon they would wash their faces and take a 
friendly drink. Men would sometimes lose a part 
of an ear, the end of a nose, or the whole of an 
eye in these combats, for it was considered within 
the rules to bite and gouge. 

In this wild country Peter Burnett grew to man- 
hood, attending school occasionally in summer, and 
getting a pretty good rudimentary education. Com- 
ing of intelligent, honest, able ancestors, he used his 
opportunities well, and learned a great deal from 
books, but more from a close observation of the 
natural wonders by which he was surrounded. 
His acute and kindly remarks upon the wild an- 
imals and wild nature of this continent could be 
profitably studied by almost any naturalist. It is 
surprising that one who has almost all his life lived 
on the advanced wave of civilization in this coun- 
try should have acquired, among his other posses- 
sions, an extensive knowledge of literature, as well 
as of life and nature. Nor is his case by any means 
uncommon. 

When he was nineteen his father gave him a 



PETER H. BURNETT. 129 

horse three years old, a saddle and bridle, a new- 
camlet cloak, and twenty-six dollars, and his mother 
furnished him with a good suit of jeans. Soon 
after, he mounted his young horse and rode back 
to his native State, and took charge of the tavern 
aforesaid in the town of Bolivar, Hardiman County, 
of which tavern he was waiter, clerk, and book- 
keeper. Here he had a pretty hard time. Being 
very young, gawky, and ill-dressed, he was subject 
to a good deal of jesting and ridicule. But he was 
fond of reading. Finding, by chance, at the house 
of an uncle. Pope's translation of the Iliad, he was 
perfectly entranced with it. 

" Had it been gold or precious stones," he tells 
us, "the pleasure would not have equaled that 
which I enjoyed." 

Nevertheless, he fancied that his ignorance, his 
country dress and uncouth manners caused him to 
be slighted even by his own relations. 

" I was badly quizzed," he says, " and greatly 
mortified ; but I worked on resolutely, said noth- 
ing, and was always at the post of duty." 

Promotion is sure to come to a lad of that spirit, 
and accordingly we soon find him a clerk in a coun- 
try store earning two hundred dollars a year and 
his board, besides being head over ears in love with 
a beautiful girl. At first he did not know that he 
was in love ; but, one day, when he had been tak- 
ing dinner with her family, and had talked with 
the young lady herself after dinner a good while, 



130 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

he came out of the house, and was amazed to dis- 
cover that the sun was gone from the sky. 

" In a confused manner," he relates, " I inquired 
of her father what had become of the sun. He 
politely replied, ' It has gone down ! ' I knew then 
that I was in love. It was a plain case." 

In those good old times marriage did not present 
the difficulties which it now does. He was soon 
married, obtained more lucrative employment, got 
into business for himself, failed, studied law, and 
found himself, at the age of thirty-six, the father 
of a family of six children, twenty-eight thousand 
dollars in debt, and, though in good practice at the 
bar, not able to reduce his indebtedness more than 
a thousand dollars a year. So he set his face 
toward Oregon, then containing only three or four 
hundred settlers. He mounted the stump and or- 
ganized a wagon-train, the roll of which at the ren- 
dezvous contained two hundred and ninety-three 
names. With this party, whose effects were drawn 
by oxen and mules, he started in May, 1843, for a 
journey of seventeen hundred miles across a wilder- 
ness most of which had never been trodden by civil- 
ized men. 

For six months they pursued their course west- 
ward. Six persons died on the way, five turned 
back, fifteen went to California, and those who held 
their course towards Oregon endured hardships 
and privations which tasked their fortitude to the 
uttermost. Mr. Burnett surveyed the scenes of the 



PETER H. BURNETT. 131 

wilderness with the eye of an intelligent and sym- 
pathetic observer. Many of his remarks upon the 
phenomena of those untrodden plains are of un- 
usual interest, whether he is discoursing upon an- 
imate or inanimate nature. 

Ai'rived in Oregon, an eight months' journey 
from Washington, the settlers were obliged to make 
a provisional government for themselves, to which 
the Tennessee lawyer lent an able hand. He re- 
lates an incident of the first collision between law 
and license. They selected for sheriff the famous 
Joseph L. Meek, a man of the best possible temper, 
but as brave as a lion. The first man who defied 
the new laws was one Dawson, a carpenter, scarcely 
less courageous than Meek himself. Dawson, who 
had been in a fight, disputed the right of the sheriff 
to arrest him. The sheriff simply replied : — 

" Dawson, I came for you." 

The carpenter raised his plane to defend himself. 
Meek wrested it from him. Dawson picked up his 
broad axe, but on rising found himself within a 
few inches of Meek's cocked revolver. 

" Dawson," said the sheriff, laughing, " I came 
for you. Surrender or die." 

Dawson surrendered, and from that hour to the 
present, Oregon has been ruled by law. In the 
course of five years the pioneer had brought under 
cultivation a good farm in Oregon, which supported 
his family in great abundance, but did not con- 
tribute much to the reduction of those Tennessee 



132 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

debts, which he was determined to pay if it took 
him all his life to do it. 

The news of the gold discovery in California 
reached Oregon. He organized another wagon- 
train, and in a few months he and another lawyer 
were in the mining country, drawing deeds for town 
lots, from sunrise to sunset, at ten dollars a deed. 
They did their " level best," he says, and each made 
a hundred dollars a day at the business. Again 
he assisted in the formation of a government, and 
he was afterwards elected the first governor of the 
State of California. At present, at the age of 
seventy-five, his debts long ago paid, a good estate 
acquired, and his children all well settled in life, he 
amuses himself with discounting notes in the Pacific 
Bank of San Francisco. Every person concerned 
in the management of a bank would do well to con- 
sider his wise remarks on the business of banking. 
When a man brings him a note for discount, he 
says, he asks five questions : — 

1. Is the supposed borrower an honest man? 
2. Has he capital enough for his business ? 3. Is 
his business reasonably safe? 4. Does he manage 
it well ? 5. Does he live economically ? 

The first and last of these questions are the vital 
ones, he thinks, though the others are not to be 
slighted. 



GERRIT SMITH. 



Foe many years we were in the habit of hearing, 
now and then, of a certain Gerrit Smith, a strange 
gentleman who lived near Lake Ontario, where he 
possessed whole townships of land, gave away vast 
quantities of money, and was pretty sure to be found 
on the unpopular side of all questions, beloved alike 
by those who agreed with him and those who differed 
from him. Every one that knew him spoke of the 
majestic beauty of his form and face, of his joyous 
demeanor, of the profuse hospitality of his village 
abode, where he lived like a jovial old German 
baron, but without a baron's battle-axe and hunt- 
ing spear. 

He was indeed an interesting character. With- 
out his enormous wealth he would have been, per- 
haps, a benevolent, enterprising farmer, who would 
have lived beloved and died lamented by all who 
knew him. But his wealth made him remarkable ; 
for the possession of wealth usually renders a man 
steady-going and conservative. It is like ballast to 
a ship. The slow and difficult process by which 
honest wealth is usually acquired is pretty sure to 



134 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

" take the nonsense out of a man," and give to all 
his enterprises a practicable character. But here 
was a man whose wealth was more like the gas to a 
balloon than ballast to a ship ; and he flung it around 
with an ignorance of human nature most astonish- 
ing in a person so able and intelligent. There was 
room in the world for one Gerrit Smith, but not 
for two. If we had many such, benevolence itseK 
would be brought into odium, and we should reserve 
all our admiration for the close-fisted. 

His ancestors were Dutchmen, long settled in 
Rockland County, New York. Gerrit's father 
owned the farm upon which Major Andre was exe- 
cuted, and might even have witnessed the tragedy, 
since he was twelve years old at the time. Peter 
Smith was his name, and he had a touch of genius 
in his composition, just enough to disturb and in- 
jure his life. At sixteen this Peter Smith was a 
merchant's clerk in New York, with such a love of 
the stage that he performed minor parts at the old 
Park theatre, and it is said could have made a good 
actor. He was a sensitive youth, easily moved to 
tears, and exceedingly susceptible to religious im- 
pressions. While he was still a young man he went 
into the fur business with John Jacob Astor, and 
tramped all over western and northern New York, 
buying furs from the Indians, and becoming inti- 
mately acquainted with that magnificent domain. 
The country bordering upon Lake Ontario abounded 
in fur-bearing animals at that period, and both the 



GERRIT SMITH. 135 

partners foretold Rocliester, Oswego, and the other 
lake ports, before any wliite man had built a log 
hut on their site. 

Astor invested his profits in city lots, but Peter 
Smith bought gTeat tracts of land in northern and 
western New York. He sometimes bought town- 
ships at a single purchase, and when he died he 
owned in the State not far from a million acres. 
His prosperity, however, was of little advantage to 
him, for as he advanced in life a kind of religious 
gloom gained possession of him. He went about 
distributing tracts, and became at, length so much 
impaired in his disposition that his wife could not 
live with him ; finally, he withdrew from business 
and active life, made over the bulk of his property 
to his son, Gerrit, and, settling in Schenectady, 
passed a lonely and melancholy old age. 

Gerrit Smith, the son of this strong and per- 
turbed spirit, was educated at Hamilton College, 
near Utica, where he figmred in the character, very 
uncommon at colleges in those days, of rich man's 
son ; a strikingly handsome, winning youth, with 
flowing hair and broad Byron collar, fond of all 
innocent pleasures, member of a card club, and by 
no means inattentive to his dress. It seems, too, 
that at college he was an enthusiastic reader of pass- 
ing literature, although in after days he scarcely 
shared in the intellectual life of his time. At the 
age of twenty-two he was a married man. He feD 
in love at college with the president's daughter, who 



136 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

died after a married life of only seven months. 
Married happily a second time a year or two after, 
he settled at his well-known house in Peterboro, a 
village near Oswego, where he lived ever after. The 
profession of the law, for which he had prepared 
himself, he never, practiced, since the care of his 
immense estate absorbed his time and ability ; as 
much so as the most exacting profession. In all 
those operations which led to the development of 
Oswego from an outlying military post into a large 
and thriving city, Gerrit Smith was of necessity a 
leader or participant, — for the best of his prop- 
erty lay in that region. 

And here was his first misfortune. Rich as he 
was, his estate was all undeveloped, and nothing 
but the personal labor of the owner could make it 
of value. For twenty years or more he was the 
slave of his estate. He could not travel abroad ; 
he could not recreate his mind by pleasure. Al- 
bany, the nearest large town, was more than a 
hundred miles distant, a troublesome journey then ; 
and consequently he had few opportunities of ming- 
ling with men of the world. He was a man of 
the frontier, an admirable leader of men engaged 
in the mighty work of subduing the wilderness and 
laying the foundations of empires. He, too, bought 
land, like his father before him, although his main 
interest lay in improving his estate and making it 
accessible. 

In the midst of his business life, when he was 



GERRIT SMITH. 137 

carrjdng a vast spread of sail (making canals, lay- 
ing out towns, deep in all sorts of enterprises), the 
panic of 1837 struck him, laid him on his beam 
ends, and almost put him under water. He owed 
an immense sum of money — small, indeed, com- 
pared with his estate, but crushing at a time when 
no money could be raised upon the security of 
land. When he owned a million acres, as well as a 
great quantity of canal stock, plank-road stock, and 
wharf stock, and when fifteen hundred men owed 
him money, some in large amounts, he found it diffi- 
cult to raise money enough to go to Philadelphia. 
In this extremity he had recourse to his father's 
friend and partner, John Jacob Astor, then the 
richest man in North America. Gerrit Smith de- 
scribed his situation in a letter, and asked for a 
large loan on land security. 

Mr. Astor replied by inviting him to dinner. 
During the repast the old man was full of anecdote 
and reminiscence of the years when himself and 
Peter Smith camped out on the Oswego River, and 
went about with packs on their backs buying furs. 
When the cloth was removed the terrible topic was 
introduced, and the guest explained his situation 
once more. 

" How much do you need ? " inquired Astor. 

"In all, I must have two hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars." 

"Do you want the whole of it at once?" asked 
the millionaire. 



138 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

" I do," was the reply. 

Astor looked serious for a moment, and then 
said : — 

"You shaU have it." 

The guest engaged to forward a mortgage on 
some lands along the Oswego River, and a few days 
after, before the mortgage was ready, the old man 
sent his check for the -two hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars. Through the neglect of a clerk the 
mortgage papers were not sent for some weeks after, 
so that Mr. Astor had parted with this great sum 
upon no other security than a young man's word. 
But Jolm Jacob Astor was a good judge of men, as 
well as of land. 

Thus relieved, Gerrit Smith pursued his career 
without embarrassment, and in about twenty years 
paid o& all his debts, and had then a revenue 
ranging from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars a 
year. He gave away money continuously, from 
thirty thousand to a hundred thousand dollars a 
year, in large sums and in small sums, to the de- 
serving and the undeserving. Of course, he was in- 
undated with begging letters. Every mail brought 
requests for help to redeem farms, to send children 
to school, to buy a piano, to buy an alpaca dress 
with the trimmings, to relieve sufferers by fire, and 
to pay election expenses. 

" The small checks," Mr. Frothingham tells us, 
*' flew about in all directions, carrying, in the aggre- 
gate, thousands of dollars, hundreds of which fell 
on sandy or gravelly soil, and produced nothing." 



GERRIT SMITH. 139 

He gave, in fact, to every project which promised 
to relieve human distress, or promote human hap- 
piness. He used to have checks ready drawn to 
various amounts, only requiring to be signed and 
supplied with the name of the applicant. On one 
occasion he gave fifty dollars each to all the old 
maids and widows he could get knowledge of in the 
State of New York — six hundred of them in all. 
He gave away nearly three thousand small farms, 
from fifteen to seventy-five acres each, most of them 
to landless colored men. 

" For years," said he, " I have indulged the 
thought that when I had sold enough land to pay 
my debts, I would give away the remainder to the 
poor. I am an Agrarian. I would that every man 
who desires a farm might have one, and no man 
covet the possession of more farms than one." 

I need not say that these farms were of little 
benefit to those who received them, for our colored 
friends are by no means the men to go upon a patch 
of northern soil and wring an independent liveli- 
hood out of it. Gerrit Smith was a sort of blind, 
benevolent Samson, amazingly ignorant of human 
nature, of human life, and of the conditions upon 
which alone the welfare of our race is promoted. 
He died in 1874, aged seventy-seven, having lived 
one of the strangest lives ever recorded, and having 
exhibited a cast of character which excites equal 
admiration and regret. 



PETER FOECE. 



One of the interesting sights of the city of Wash- 
ington used to be the library of " Old Peter Force," 
as he was familiarly called, — Colonel Peter Force, 
as he was more properly styled. He was one of 
the few colonels of that day who had actually held 
a colonel's command, having been regularly com- 
missioned by the President of the United States as 
a colonel of artillery in the District of Columbia. 
He might, indeed, have been called major-general, 
for ia his old age he held that rank in the militia 
of the district. And a very fine-looking soldier he 
must have been in his prime, judging from the por- 
trait which used to hang in the library, represent- 
ing a full-formed man, tall and erect, his handsome 
and benevolent countenance set off by an abun- 
dance of curly hair. 

His library had about the roughest furniture 
ever seen in an apartment containing so much that 
was valuable. As I remember it, it was a long, 
low room, with streets and cross-streets of pine 
book-shelves, unpainted, all filled with books to 
their utmost capacity — a wilderness of books, in 



PETER FORCE. 141 

print and in manuscript, mostly old and dingy, and 
almost all of them relating in some way to Ameri- 
can history. The place had a very musty smell ; 
and as most of its treasures were in the original 
bindings, or without bindings, few persons would 
have suspected the priceless value of the collection. 
I am acquainted with a certain library in New York 
of several thousand volumes, most of which are 
bound resplendently in calf and gold, and the room 
in which they are kept is " as splendid as a steam- 
boat," but old Peter Force could show you single 
alcoves of his library which, at a fair valuation, 
would buy out all that mass of sumptuosity. 

It was not always easy to find the old gentleman 
in his dusty, dingy wilderness ; but when you had 
discovered him in some remote recess he would 
take pleasure in exhibiting his treasures. He 
would take down his excellent copy of Eliot's In- 
dian Bible, a book so faithfuUy made in every re- 
spect that I question if, as a mere piece of book- 
making, it could now be matched in the United 
States. He lived to see this rarity command in 
New York the price of fourteen hundred and fifty 
dollars. He would show you forty-one works, in 
the original editions, of Increase and Cotton Ma- 
ther, the most recent of which was published in 
1735. He possessed a large number of books 
printed and bound by Benjamin Franklin. He 
had two hundred volumes of the records of Colo- 
nial legislatures. He could show you a newspa- 



142 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

per of almost every montli — nay, almost every 
week, since newspapers were first published in 
America. He had in all nine hundred and fifty 
bound volumes of newspapers, of which two hvin- 
dred and forty-five volumes were published before 
the year 1800. He would show you a collection of 
more than thirty-nine thousand pamphlets, of which 
eight thousand were printed before the year 1800. 
His collection of maps relating to America was 
truly wonderful. Besides all the early atlases 
of any note, he had over a thousand detached 
maps illustrative both of the geography and his- 
tory of America ; for many of them were maps 
and plans drawn for military purposes. He would 
show you, perhaps, a pen-drawing of date 1779, 
by a British officer, upon which was written : " Plan 
of the rebel works at West Point." He had also 
several plans by British officers of " the rebel 
works " around Boston during the revolution. 

Besides such things (and he had over three 
hundred plans and maps of which there was no 
other copy in existence), he possessed a surprising 
number of books printed in the infancy of the print- 
er's art ; among them specimens representing every 
year from 1467 onward. He had more than two 
hundred and fifty books printed before the year 
1600, so arranged that a student could trace the 
progress of the art of printing from the days of 
Caxton. He had also a vast collection of manu- 
scripts, numbering four hundred and twenty-nine 



PETER FORCE. 143 

volumes, many of which were of particular in- 
terest. The whole number of volumes in the li- 
brary was 22,529, and the number of pamphlets 
nearly 40,000. 

The reader, perhaps, imagines that the collect- 
or of such a library must have been a very rich 
man, and that he traveled far and wide in search 
of these precious objects. Not at all. He never 
was a rich man, and I believe he rarely traveled 
beyond the sight of the dome of the Capitol. In- 
deed, the most wonderful thing about his collection 
was that he, who began life a journeyman printer, 
and was never in the receipt of a large income, 
should have been able to get together so vast an 
amount of valuable material. Part of the secret 
was that when he began to make his collection 
these things were not valued, and he obtained many 
of his most precious relics by merely taking the 
trouble to carry them away from the garrets in 
which they were mouldering into dust, unprized 
and unknown. 

A wise old New York merchant, long ago him- 
self mouldered into dust, used to say : — 

" Men generally get in this world exactly what 
they want. " 

" How can that be ? " asked a youngster one 
day. " Almost everybody in New York wants to 
be rich, but very few of them ever will be. I 
want a million or so myseK.'' 

"Ah, boy," the old man replied, "you want a 



144 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

million ; but you don't want it enough. What you 
want at present is pleasure, and you want it so 
much that you are willing to spend all your sur- 
plus force, time, and revenue to get it. If you 
wanted your million as much as you want pleas- 
ure, by and by, when you have a bald head like 
mine, you would have your million." 

Peter Force was a very good illustration of the 
old merchant's doctrine. He got all these precious 
things because he wanted them with a sustained pas- 
sion of desire for half a century. There never was 
a time when he would not have gladly got up in the 
middle of the night and walked ten miles, in the 
face of a northeasterly storm, to get a rare pam- 
phlet of four pages. He was a miser of such 
things. But, no ; that word does not describe him ; 
for one of the greatest pleasures of his life was to 
communicate his treasures to others ; and he com- 
municated to the whole American people the best 
of his collections in massive volumes of American 
Archives. He was a miser only in the strength of 
his desire. 

" More than once," he said to Mr. George W. 
Greene, " did I hesitate between a barrel of flour 
and a rare book ; but the book always got the up- 
per hand." 

To the same friend he made a remark which 
shows that his desire to communicate was quite as 
strong as his desire to obtain. 

" Whenever," said he, " I found a little more 



PETER FORCE. 145 

money in my purse than I absolutely needed, I 
published a volume of historical tracts." 

It was interesting- to hear the old man relate how 
this taste for the treasures of history was formed 
in his mind. His father, who served, during the 
revolution, in a New Jersey regiment, retired after 
the war to the city of New York, and at his house 
the Jersey veterans liked to meet and talk over the 
incidents of the campaigns they had made together. 
Peter, as a boy, loved to hear them tell their sto- 
ries, and, as he listened, the thought occurred to 
him one evening, Why should all this be forgot- 
ten ? Boy as he was, he began to write them down, 
under the title of " The Unwritten History of the 
War in New Jersey." He made considerable prog- 
ress in it, but unfortunately the manuscript was 
lost. The taste then formed grew with his growth 
and strengthened with his strength. At ten he 
left school forever, and went into a printing office, 
which has proved an excellent school to more than 
one valuable American mind. He became an ac- 
complished printer, and at twenty-two was elected 
president of the New York Typographical Society, 
an organization which still exists. 

Then the war of 1812 began. Like his father 
before him, he served in the army, first as private, 
then as sergeant, then as sergeant-major, then as 
ensign, finally as lieutenant. The war ended. He 
went to Washington as foreman of a printing office, 
and at Washington, as printer, editor, publishei 

10 



146 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

and collector, he lived the rest of his long and hon- 
orable life ; never rich, as I have before remarked, 
though never without a share of reasonable pros- 
perity. The most important work of his life was 
the publication of the American Archives, in which 
he was aided by Congress ; he furnishing the docu- 
ments and the labor, and Congress paying the cost 
of publication. Through the nine volumes of this 
work a great number of the most curious and in- 
teresting records and memorials of American his- 
tory are not only preserved, but made accessible to 
all students who can get near a library. He had 
all the State-houses of the country ransacked for 
documents, and a room was assigned him in the 
Department of State in which his clerks could con- 
veniently copy them. 

All went well with the work until William Marcy 
became Secretary of State, whose duty it was to ex- 
amine and approve each volume before it went to 
the printer. When Peter Force presented the 
manuscript of the tenth volume to Secretary Marcy 
he received a rebuff which threw a cloud over sev- 
eral years of his life. 

" I don't believe in your work, sir," said the sec- 
retary. " It is of no use to anybody. I never read 
a page of it, and never expect to." 

"But," said Mr, Force, "the work is published 
in virtue of a contract with the government. Here 
is the manuscript of the tenth volume. If there 
is anything there which you think ought not to 



PETER FORCE. 147 

be there, have the goodness to point it out to 
me." 

" You may leave the papers, sir," said the secre- 
tary. 

He left the papers ; but neither Marcy nor his 
successors ever found time to examine that tenth 
volume, though on the first day of every official 
year the compiler called their attention to it. For 
seven years he was a suitor on behalf of his be- 
loved tenth volume, and then the war occurred and 
all such matters were necessarily put aside. He 
was now seventy-one years of age, and his great 
desire was to dispose of his library in such a way 
that its treasures would not be scattered abroad, 
and perhaps lost forever to the country. At length, 
Congress having sanctioned the enlargement of 
their own library, their librarian, Mr. Spofford, in- 
duced them to purchase the whole mass, just as it 
stood, for one hundred thousand dollars, and the 
collection now forms part of the Congressional 
library. 

Colonel Force lived to the year 1868, when he 
died at Washington, universally beloved and la- 
mented, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, en- 
joying almost to the last two of the things he loved 
best — his books and his flowers. 



JOHN BROMFIELD, 

MERCHANT. 



John Bromfield's monument is more lasting 
than brass. It was he who left to the city of New- 
buryport, in Massachusetts, ten thousand dollars 
for planting and preserving trees in the streets, 
and keeping the sidewalks in order. The income 
of this bequest would not go far in any other sort 
of monument, but it has embowered his native city 
in beautiful trees. Every spring other trees are 
planted, and, as long as that bequest is faithfully 
administered, he cannot be forgotten. 

Nothing brings a larger or surer return than 
money judiciously spent in making towns and cities 
pleasant. It not only yields a great revenue of 
pleasure and satisfaction to the inhabitants ; it not 
only benefits every individual of them every hour, 
but it invites residents from abroad ; it is a stand- 
ing invitation to persons of taste and good sense. 
The wisest thing the city of New York ever did, 
next to the introduction of the Croton water, was 
the creation of the Central Park ; the one fea- 
ture which redeems the city from the disgrace of 



JOHN BROMFIELD. 149 

its dirty streets and its agonizing tenement re- 
gion. 

This John Bromfield, merchant, was just such a 
thoughtful and benevolent man as we should nat- 
urally expect to find him from his bequest. He 
belonged to a class of merchants which is rapidly 
becoming extinct. The cable telegraph and the 
steam freight ship are superseding the merchants 
of moderate capital, and are concentrating the 
great business of interchanging commodities in the 
hands of a few houses who reckon their capital by 
millions. Born at Newburyport, in 1779, he was 
brought up by excellent parents near Boston, who 
practiced the old-fashioned system of making him 
hardy and self-helpful. His mother used to say 
that when he was old enough to wear leather shoes 
she bored holes in the soles in order to accustom 
him to wet feet, so that he might be made less li- 
able to catch cold from that cause. This appears 
to have been a custom of that generation, for it is 
recorded of the mother of Josiah Quincy that she 
would never let him take off his wet shoes, regard- 
ing it as an effeminate practice. 

On approaching the time of entering college his 
father met with misfortunes and could not bear the 
expense. Two aunts of his, who could well afford 
it, offered to pay his expenses in college. He 
firmly declined the offer. The foundation of his 
character and career was a love of independence. 
He asked to be apprenticed, as the custom then 



150 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

was, to a mercantile house, and remained in it as 
long as it held together. After its failure he tried 
for months to obtain a clerkship, but, not succeed- 
ing, he arranged with a carpenter to learn his 
trade. Just before putting on the carpenter's apron 
an opening occurred in his own business, and he 
became a merchant. About the year 1801 he went 
out to China as supercargo, and continued to visit 
that part of the world in similar capacities for 
many years, occasionally making small ventures of 
his own, and slowly accumulating a little capital. 
He had a series of the most discouraging misfor- 
tunes. In the year 1813 he wrote to his sister 
from Cadiz : — 

" It is a melancholy truth that in the whole course 
of my life I never arrived at a good market." 

On that occasion everything promised well. He 
had a ship full of valuable goods, and the market 
to which he was carrying them was in an excellent 
condition for his purpose, but within twenty-four 
hours of his port he was captured, and detained ten 
weeks a prisoner. After the peace of 1815, mer- 
chants could send their ships across the ocean with- 
out fear of their being taken by English or French 
cruisers. From that time he had better luck, and 
gradually gained a moderate fortxme, upon which 
he retired. He never kept a store, or had any sort 
of warehouse, but made his fortune by sending or 
taking merchandise from a port which had too 
much of it to one that was in want of it. 



JOHN BROMFIELD. 151 

On one of his winter passages to Europe he 
found the sailors suffering extremely from hand- 
ling frozen ropes, as they were not provided with 
mittens. Being a Yankee, and having been brought 
up to do things as well as read about them, he 
took one of his thick overcoats and made with his 
own hands a pair of mittens for every sailor. 

On another occasion, in the ship Atahualpa, in 
1809, bound to China, the vessel was attacked off 
Macao by pirates, in twenty-two junks, some of 
them being twice the tonnage of the vessel. Cap- 
tain Sturgis, who commanded the vessel, defended 
her with signal ability and courage, and kept the 
pirates off for forty minutes, until the vessel gained 
the protection of the fort. John Bromfield, a pas- 
senger on board, took command of a gun, and sec- 
onded the endeavors of the captain with such cool- 
ness and promptitude as to contribute essentially to 
the protection of the vessel. 

In retirement he lived a quiet life in Boston, 
unmarried, fond of books, and practicing unusual 
frugality for a person in liberal circumstances. He 
had a singular abhorrence of luxury, waste, and os- 
tentation. He often said that the cause of more 
than half the bankruptcies was spending too much 
money. Nothing could induce him to accept per- 
sonal service. He was one of those men who wait 
upon themselves, light their own fire, reduce their 
wants to the necessaries of civilized life, and all 
with a view to a more perfect independence. He 



152 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

would take trouble to oblige others, but could not 
bear to put any one else to troiible. This love of 
independence was carried to excess by him, and 
was a cause of sorrow to his relations and friends. 

He was a man of maxims, and one of them 
was : — 

" The good must merit God's peculiar care, 
And none but God can tell us who they are." 

Another of his favorite couplets was Pope's : — 

" Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense. 
Lie in three words : health, peace, and competence." 

He used to quote Burns's stanza about the desir- 
ableness of wealth : — 

' ' Not to hide it in a hedge, 
Nor for a train attendant ; 
But for the glorious privilege 
Of being independent." 

He was utterly opposed to the way in which busi- 
ness was then conducted — hazardous enterprises 
undertaken upon borrowed capital. The excessive 
credit formerly given was the frequent theme of 
his reprobation. 

How changed the country, even in the short 
space of sixty years ! In 1825 he made a journey 
from Boston to New Orleans, and his letters show 
curious glimpses of life and travel as they then 
were. Leaving Boston at four o'clock on a Friday 
morning, he reached New York at ten o'clock on 
Saturday morning, and he speaks of this perfor- 



JOHN BROMFIELD. 153 

mance with astonisliment. Boston to New York 
in thirty hours ! He was in New York November 
4, 1825, when the opening- of the Erie Canal was 
celebrated. He did not care much for the proces- 
sion. 

" There was, however," he adds, " an interesting 
exhibition of steamboats, probably greater than 
could be found at any other place in the world ; 
say, from, tioenty-Jive to thirty, and most of them 
of a large class." 

He was in the valley of the Ohio that year, and 
he spoke of it " as the land of cheapness : " flour, 
two dollars and a quarter a barrel; oats, twelve 
and a half cents a bushel ; corn and rye, twenty 
cents ; coal, three cents. He found all the region 
from Louisville to Louisiana "one vast wilder- 
ness," with scarcely any settlements, and now and 
then a log hut on the banks, occupied by the peo- 
ple who cut wood for the steamboats. On the 
prairies of Missouri he rode miles and miles with- 
out seeing a house. Indiana was an almost un- 
broken wilderness : corn ten cents a bushel, a wild 
turkey twelve and half cents, and other things in 
proportion. 

Nevertheless, travelers at that day had some 
pleasures which could be advantageously compared 
with the ease and comfort of the Pullman car. The 
Alleghanies were then crossed by open wagons 
drawn by splendid Pennsylvania horses, six in a 
team, gayly decorated with ribbons, bells, and trap- 



154 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

pings. He used to repeat, in a peculiarly buoyant 
and delightful manner, a popular song of the day, 
called " The Wagoner," suggested by the appar- 
ently happy lot of the boys who rode and drove 
these horses. Some readers may remember the old 
song, beginning : — 

"I 've ofteu thought if I were asked 
Whose lot I envied most, 
What one I thought most lightly tasked 

Of man's unnumbered host, 
I 'd say I 'd be a mountain boy 
And drive a noble team — wo hoy ! 
Wo hoy ! I 'd cry, 
And lightly fly 

Into my saddle seat ; 
My rein I 'd slack. 
My whip I 'd crack — 
What music is so sweet ? 
Six blacks I 'd drive, of ample chest, 

All carrying high their head. 
All harnessed tight, and gaily dressed 

In winkers tipped with red. 
Oh, yes ! I 'd be a mountain boy, 
And such a team I 'd drive — wo hoy ! 
Wo hoy ! I 'd cry ; 
The lint should fly. 

Wo hoy ! Dobbm, Ball. 
Their feet should ring. 
And I would sing, 

I 'd sing my f al-de-roU. ' ' 

We have almost forgotten that such a gay mode 
of crossing the AUeghanies was ever practiced ; and 
yet a person need not be very old to have enjoyed 



JOHN BROMFIELD. 155 

the experience. I myself, for example, can just 
remember riding from Buffalo to New York by a 
line of stages that came round by the Alleghany 
Mountains, and crossed the State of New Jersey, 
passing through Morristown. We were just six 
days in performing the journey. 

This excellent man, after a tranquil and happy 
Hfe, died in 1849, aged seventy, and left consider- 
able sums to benevolent societies. His estate proved 
to be of about two hundred thousand dollars value, 
which was then considered very large, and he be- 
stowed something more than half of it upon insti- 
tutions for mitigating human woe. Ten thousand 
of it he gave for the promotion of pleasure, and 
the evidences of his forethought and benevolence 
are waving and rustling above my head as these 
lines are written. His memory is green in New- 
buryport. All the birds and all the lovers, all who 
walk and all who ride, the gay equestrian and the 
dusty wayfarer, the old and the invalid who can 
only look out of the window, all owe his name a 
blessing. 



FEEDEEICK TUDOE, 

ICE EXPORTER. 



Edwaed Eveeett used to relate a curious anec- 
dote of the time when he was the American minister 
at London. He was introduced one day to an 
Eastern prince, who greeted him with a degree of 
enthusiasm tliat was altogether unusual and unex- 
pected. The prince launched into eulogium of the 
United States, and expressed a particular gratitude 
for the great benefit conferred upon the East In- 
dies by Mr. Everett's native Massachusetts. The 
American minister, who was a good deal puzzled by 
this effusion, ventured at length to ask the prince 
what special benefit Massachusetts had conferred 
upon the East Indies, wondering whether it was 
the missionaries, or the common school system, or 
Daniel Webster's Bunker Hill oration. 

"I refer," said the prince, "to the great quan- 
tity of excellent ice which comes to us from Bos- 
ton." 

Mr. Everett bowed with his usual politeness, but 
was much amused at the excessive gratitude of the 
prince for the service named. 



FREDERICK TUDOR. 157 

The founder of this foreign ice business, which 
has now attained such large proportions, was a Bos- 
ton merchant named Frederick Tudor, son of that 
Colonel William Tudor who studied law under 
John Adams, and who served his country on the 
staff of General Washington, and afterwards be- 
came a judge. Frederick Tudor, who was born in 
1783, the year of the peace between England and 
the United States, entered early into business, be- 
ing at twenty-two already owner of a vessel trading 
with the West Indies. 

It was in 1805 that the idea of exporting ice first 
occurred to him — an idea which, as he was accus- 
tomed to relate in his old age, was received with 
derision by the whole town as a "mad project." 
He had made his calculations too carefully, how- 
ever, to be disturbed by a little ridicule ; and that 
same year he sent out his first cargo of a hundred 
and thirty tons, to the Island of Martinique. 

The result justified his confidence. The ice ar- 
rived in perfect condition, and he was encouraged 
to follow up his single cargo with many others 
larger and more profitable. During the war of 
1812 business was somewhat interrupted by the 
English cruisers, which were ever on the alert for 
prizes in the West Indian waters, but, after peace 
was declared, his trade increased rapidly. He 
supplied ice to Charleston and New Orleans also, 
those cities at first requiring but a ship-load ea,ch 
per annum, although the demand increased so rap- 



158 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

idly that a few years later New Orleans alone con- 
sumed thirty cargoes. 

Almost from the first, Mr. Tudor had believed 
that ice could be transported as safely and profit- 
ably to Calcutta as to Havana ; but he could not 
bring others to share this opinion — at least, not to 
the point of risking money upon it. It was not, 
therefore, untU 1834, twenty-nine years later than 
his Martinique experiment, that he sent his first 
cargo of one hundred and eighty tons of ice to 
India. Notwithstanding a waste of one third of 
the whole cargo during the voyage, he was able to 
sell this Massachusetts ice at one half the price 
charged for the artificially frozen ice formerly used 
in Calcutta by the few families who could afford 
such a luxury. 

The cold commodity which he provided met, 
therefore, with a warm welcome from the English 
inhabitants. They recognized the boon afforded 
them, and expressed their gratitude by raising 
a subscription and presenting to the enterprising 
Yankee merchant a fire-proof building in which to 
store his ice. He met them in the same spirit of 
wise liberality, and sold the article at no more than 
a reasonable profit — about three cents a pound — 
which enabled the great body of English residents 
to use the ice habitually. Mr. Tudor used to boast 
that in Jamaica he sold the best Wenham ice at 
half the price which an inferior article brought in 
London ; and even at Calcutta he made ice cheaper 



FREDERICK TUDOR. 159 

than it was in London or Paris. On the passage 
to the East Indies, ice is four or five months at sea, 
traverses sixteen thousand miles of salt water, and 
crosses the equator twice ; and on its arrival it is 
stored in massive double-walled houses, which are 
covered by four or five separate roofs. It has also 
to be unloaded in a temperature of ninety to one 
hundred degrees. Notwithstanding all this, the in- 
habitants of the most distant tropical seaports are 
supplied with ice every day of the year at the mod- 
erate price mentioned above. 

It was Frederick Tudor also who originated and 
developed the best methods of cutting, packing, 
storing, and discharging ice, so as to reduce the 
waste to the minimum. I am assured by a gentle- 
man engaged in the business that the blocks of ice 
now reach Calcutta, after the long voyage from Bos- 
ton, with a waste scarcely noticeable. The vessels 
are loaded during the cold snaps of January, when 
water will freeze in the hold of a vessel, and when 
the entire ship is penetrated with the intensest cold. 
The glittering blocks of iee, two feet thick, at a 
temperature below zero, are brought in by railroad 
from the lakes, and are placed on board the ships 
with a rapidity which must be seen to be appre- 
ciated. The blocks are packed in sawdust, whiclv 
is used very much as mortar is used in a stone wall. 
Between the topmost layer of ice and the deck there 
is sometimes a layer of closely packed hay, and 
sometimes one of barrels of apples. It has occa- 



160 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

sionally happened that the profit upon the apples 
has paid the freight upon the ice, which usually 
amounts to about ten thousand dollars, or five dol- 
lars a ton. 

The arrival of an ice ship at Calcutta is an ex- 
hilarating scene. Clouds of dusky natives come on 
board to buy the apples, which are in great request, 
and bring from ten to thirty cents each, according 
to the supply. Happy is the native who has capi- 
tal enough to buy a whole barrel of the fruit. Off 
he trudges with it on his back to the place of sale, 
or else puts it on a little cart and peddles the apples 
about the streets. In a day or two that portion of 
the cargo has disappeared, and then the ice is to be 
unloaded. It was long before a native could be in- 
duced to handle the crystal blocks. Tradition re- 
ports that they ran away affrighted, thinking the 
ice was something bewitched and fraught with dan- 
ger. But now they come on board in a long line, 
and each of them takes a huge block of ice upon 
his head and conveys it to the adjacent ice-house, 
moving with such rapidity that the blocks are ex- 
posed to the air only a few seconds. Once depos- 
ited there, the waste almost ceases again, and the 
ice which cost in Boston four dollars a ton is worth 
fifty dollars. 

When Frederick Tudor had been employed 
twenty-five years in this trade, finding it inconve- 
nient to be separated from the great body of mer- 
chants, he embarked again in general mercantile 



FREDERICK TUDOR. 161 

business, by way of re-uniting himself to his formei' 
associates. The experiment resulted in ruinous 
losses. In less than three years he was a bank- 
rupt, and owed his creditors two hundred and ten 
thousand dollars more than he could pay. The ice 
business being still profitable and growing, it was 
proposed to him that he should conduct it as the 
agent of his creditors, retaining a specified sum per 
annum for his personal expenses. To this he ob- 
jected, and said to them : — 

" Allow me to proceed, and I will work for you 
better than I can mider any restriction. Give me 
the largest liberty, and I will pay the whole in time 
with interest." 

He was then fifty-two years of age, and he had 
undertaken to pay an indebtedness, the mere inter- 
est of which was about ten thousand dollars a year. 
By the time he had got fairly at work the treachery 
of an agent whom he had raised from poverty to 
wealth lost him his Havana monopoly, his principal 
source of profit. Then it became necessary to buy 
land bordering the lakes from which he gathered 
ice, and to erect in Calcutta, New Orleans, and else- 
where expensive and peculiarly constructed build- 
ings for storage. Occasionally, too, he experienced 
the losses and adverse incidents from which no busi- 
ness is exempt. Nevertheless, in fourteen years 
from the date of his bankruptcy he had paid his 
debts, principal and interest, amounting to two hun- 
dred and eighty thousand dollars, besides having 



162 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

acquired a large quantity of real estate, some of 
which had increased in value tenfold. Thus, while 
paying his debts, and in the very process of paying, 
and while thinking only of his creditors' interest, 
he had gained for himself a very large fortune. He 
continued an ice merchant for more than fifty years ; 
or, as he said himself : — 

" I began this trade in the youthful hopes attend- 
ant on the age of twenty-two. I have followed it 
until I have a head with scarcely a hair that is not 
white." 

It was this enterprising merchant who may be 
said to have created the beautiful seaside retreat 
near Boston called Nahant, where he invented many 
ingenious expedients for protecting trees and shrubs 
from the east winds which lacerate that rock-bound 
coast. His gardens and plantations in Nahant were 
famous many years before his death. He died in 
1864, aged eighty-one, leaving to his children and 
to his native State a name which was honorable 
when he inherited it, and the lustre of which his 
life increased. 



MYEON HOLLEY, 

MAEKET-GARDENER. 



Fifty years ago, this man used to sell vegetables 
and fruit from door to door in the streets of Roches- 
ter, N. y. He had a small farm a few miles out of 
town, upon which he raised the produce which he 
thus disposed of. An anecdote is related of a fine 
lady who had recently come to Rochester as the 
wife of one of its most distinguished clergymen. 
She ran up into her husband's study one morning, 
and said to him : — 

" Why, Doctor, I 've just seen the only gentle- 
man I have yet met with in Rochester, and he was 
at our basement door selling vegetables. How won- 
derful ! Who is it ? Who can it be ? " 

" It must be Myron Holley," said her husband. 

Another of his lady customers used to say that 
he sold early peas and potatoes in the morning with 
as much grace as he lectured before the Lycevun in 
the evening. Nor was it the ladies alone who ad- 
mired him. The principal newspaper of the city, 
in recording his death in 1841, spoke of him as 
" an eminent citizen, an accomplished scholar, and 



164 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

noble man, who carried with him to the grave the 
love of all who knew him." 

In reflecting upon the character of this truly re- 
markable person, I am reminded of a Newfound- 
land dog that I once had the honor of knowing 
near the spot on the shore of Lake Ontario where 
Myron Holley hoed his cabbages and picked his 
strawberries. It was the largest and most beautiful 
dog I have ever seen, of a fine shade of yellow in 
color, and of proportions so extraordinary that few 
persons could pass him without stopping to admire. 
He had the strength and calm courage of a lion, 
with the playfulness of a kitten, and an intelligence 
that seemed sometimes quite human. One thing 
this dog lacked. He was so destitute of the evil 
spirit that he would not defend himself against the 
attacks of other dogs. He seemed to have forgotten 
how to bite. He has been known to let a smaller 
dog draw blood from him without making the least 
attempt to use his own teeth in retaliation. He 
appeared to have lost the instinct of seK-assertion, 
and walked abroad protected solely, but sufficiently, 
by his vast size and imposing appearance. 

Myron Holley, I say, reminds me of this superb 
and noble creature. He was a man of the finest 
proportions both of body and of mind, beautiful in 
face, majestic in stature, fearless, gifted with vari- 
ous talents, an orator, a natural leader of men. 
With all this, he was destitute of the personal am- 
bition which lifts the strong man into publicity, and 



MYRON HOLLEY. 165 

gives him commonplace success. If he had been 
only half as good as he was, he might have been 
ten times as famous. 

He was born at Salisbury, Conn., in 1779, the 
son of a farmer who had several sons that became 
notable men. The father, too, illustrated some of 
the best traits of human nature, being one of the 
men who make the strength of a country without 
asking much from the country in return. He used 
to say to his sons that the height of human felicity 
was " to be able to converse with the wise, to in- 
struct the ignorant, to pity and despise the intrigu- 
ing villain, and to assist the unfortunate." His 
son Myron enjoyed this felicity all the days of his 
life. 

After graduating at Williams, and studying law 
at New Haven, he set his face toward western New 
York, then more remote from New England than 
Oregon now is. He made an exquisite choice of a 
place of residence, the village of Canandaigua, then 
only a hamlet of log huts along the border of one 
of the lakes for which that part of the State is fa- 
mous. The first step taken by the young lawyer af- 
ter his arrival fixed his destiny. He was assigned 
by the court to defend a man charged with murder 
— a capital chance for winning distinction in a 
frontier town. Myron HoUey, however, instead of 
confining himself to his brief and his precedents, 
began by visiting the jail and interviewing the 
prisoner. He became satisfied of his guilt. The 



166 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

next morning he came into court, resigned the case, 
and never after made any attempt to practice his 
profession. 

He was, in fact, constitutionally disqualified for 
the practice of such a calling. Having a little 
property, he bought out a bookseller of the village, 
laid out a garden, married, was soon elected county 
clerk, and spent the rest of his life in doing the 
kind of public service which yields the maximum 
of good to the country with the minimum of gain 
to the individual doing it. 

The war of 1812 filled all that region with dis- 
tress and want. It was he who took the lead in 
organizing relief, and appealed to the city of New 
York for aid with great success. As soon as the 
war was over, the old scheme of connecting Lake 
Erie vnth the Hudson by a canal was revived. It 
was an immense undertaking for that day, and a 
great majority of the prudent farmers of the State 
opposed the enterprise as something beyond their 
strength. It was Myron HoUey who went to the 
legislature year after year, and argued it through. 
His winning demeanor, his persuasive eloquence, 
his intimate knowledge of the facts involved, his 
entire conviction of the wisdom of the scheme, his 
tact, good temper, and, above all, his untiring per- 
sistence, prevailed at length, and the canal was be- 
gun. 

He was appointed one of the commissioners to 
superintend the construction of the canal at a sal- 



MYRON HOLLEY. 167 

ary of twenty-five hundred dollars a year. The 
commissioners appointed him their treasurer, which 
threw upon him for eight years an inconceivable 
amount of labor, much of which had to be done in 
situations which were extremely unhealthy. At one 
time, in 1820, he had a thousand laborers on his 
hands sick with malaria. He was a ministering 
angel to them, friend, physician, and sometimes 
nurse. He was obliged on several occasions to 
raise money for the State on his personal credit, 
and frequently he had to expend money in circum- 
stances which made it impossible for him to se- 
cure the legal evidence gf his having done so. 

In 1825 the work was done. A procession of 
boats floated from Lake Erie to New York Harbor, 
where they were received by a vast fleet of steam- 
boats and other vessels, all dressed with flags and 
crowded with people. In the midst of this triumph, 
Myron HoUey, who had managed the expenditures 
with the most scrupulous economy, was unable to 
furnish the requisite vouchers for a small part of 
the money which had passed through his hands. 
He at once gave up his small estate, and appealed 
to the legislature for relief. He was completely 
vindicated ; his estate was restored to him ; but he 
received no compensation either for his services or 
his losses. 

He returned to his garden, however, a happy 
man, and during the greater part of the rest of his 
life he earned a modest subsistence by the beauti- 



168 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

ful industry whicli has since given celebrity and 
wealth to all that fertile region. He remained, 
however, to the end of his days, one of those brave 
and unselfish public servants who take the laboring 
oar in reforms which are very difficult or very odi- 
ous. After the abduction of Morgan, he devoted 
some years to anti-masonry, and he founded what 
was called the Liberty Party, which supported Mr. 
Birney, of Kentucky, for the presidency. 

One of his fellow- workers, the Hon. Elizur 
Wright, of Boston, has recently published an inter- 
esting memoir of him, which reveals to us a cast of 
character beautiful and rq,re in men ; a character 
in which the moral qualities ruled with an easy and 
absolute sway, and from which the baser traits ap- 
peared to be eliminated. He was like that great, 
splendid, yellow king of dogs which escaped per- 
fection by not having just a spice of evil in his 
composition. 

Let me add, however, that he was as far as pos- 
sible from being a " spoony." Mr. Wright says : — 

"He had the strength of a giant, and did not 
abstain from using it in a combative sense on a fit 
occasion. When his eldest daughter, was living in 
a house not far from his own, with her first child 
in her arms, he became aware that she was in 
danger from a stout, unprincipled tramp who had 
called on her as a beggar and found her alone. 
Hastening to the house, without saying a word he 
grasped the fellow around body and both arms, and 



MYRON HOLLEY. 169 

carried him, bellowing for mercy, through the yard 
and into the middle of the street, where he set him 
down. Greatly relieved, the miserable wretch ran 
as if he had escaped from a lion." 

Mr. Wright adds another trait : " Once in Ly- 
ons (N. Y.) when there was great excitement about 
the ' sin of dancing,' the ministers aU preaching 
and praying against it, Myron HoUey quietly said : 
' It is as natural for young people to like to dance 
as for the apple trees to blossom in the spring.' " 



THE FOUNDERS OF LOWELL. 



We do not often hear of strikes at Lowell. 
Some men tell us it is because there are not as 
many foreigners there as at certain manufacturing 
centres where strikes are frequent. This cannot be 
the explanation ; for out of a population of seventy- 
one thousand, there are more than twenty thou- 
sand foreign-born inhabitants of Lowell, of whom 
more than ten thousand are natives of Ireland. 
To answer the question correctly, we must perhaps 
go back to the founding of the town in 1821, when 
there were not more than a dozen houses on the 
site. 

At that time the great water-power of the Merri- 
mac River was scarcely used, and there was not one 
cotton manufactory upon its banks. At an earlier 
day this river and its tributaries swarmed with 
beaver and other fur-yielding creatures, which fur- 
nished a considerable part of the first capital of the 
Pilgrim Fathers. The Indians trapped the beaver, 
and carried the skins to Plymouth and Boston ; and 
this is perhaps the reason why the Merrimac and 
most of its branches retain their Indian names. 



THE FOUNDERS OF LOWELL. 171 

Merrimac itself is an Indian word meaning stur- 
geon, and of its ten tributaries all but two appear to 
have Indian names : Contoocook, Soucook, Suncook, 
Piscatagoug, Souhegan, Nashua, Concord, Spiggot, 
Shawshine, and Powow. 

Besides these there are the two rivers which 
unite to form it, the names of which are still more 
peculiar : Pemigewassett and Winnepiseogee. The 
most remarkable thing with regard to these names 
is, that the people who live near see nothing re- 
markable in them, and pronounce them as naturally 
as New Yorkers do Bronx and Croton. It is diffi- 
cult for us to imagine a lover singing, or saying, 
" Meet me by the Pemigewasset, love," or asking 
her to take a row with him on the lovely Winnepi- 
seogee. But lovers do such things up there ; and 
beautiful rivers they are, flowing between moun- 
tains, and breaking occasionally into falls and 
rapids. The Merrimac, also, loses its serenity 
every few miles, and changes from a tranquil river 
into a — water-power. 

In November, 1821, a light snow already cover- 
ing the ground, six strangers stood on the banks of 
the Merrimac upon the site of the present city of 
Lowell. A canal had been dug around the falls 
for purposes of navigation, and these gentlemen 
were there with a view to the purchase of the dam 
and canal, and erecting upon the site a cotton mill. 
Their names were Patrick T. Jackson, Kirk Boott, 
Warren Dutton, Paul Moody, John W. Boott, and 



172 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Nathan Appleton ; all men of capital or skill, and 
since well known as the founders of a great na- 
tional industry. They walked about the country, 
observed the capabilities of the river, and made up 
their minds that that was the place for their new 
enterprise. 

" Some of us," said one of the projectors, " may 
live to see this place contain twenty thousand in- 
habitants." 

The enterprise was soon begun. In 1826 the 
town was incorporated and named. It is always 
difficult to name a new place or a new baby. Mr. 
Nathan Appleton met one of the other proprietors, 
who told him that the legislature was ready to in- 
corporate the town, and it only remained for them 
to fill the blank left in the act for the name. 

" The question," said he, " is narrowed down to 
two, LoweU or Derby." 

" Then," said Mr. Appleton, " Lowell, by all 
means." 

It was so named from Mr. Francis C. Lowell, 
who originated the idea. He had visited England 
and Scotland in 1811, and while there had observed 
and studied the manufacture of cotton fabrics, which 
in a few years had come to be one of the most im- 
portant industries of the British Empire. The war 
of 1812 intervened; but before the return of peace 
Mr. Lowell took measures for starting the business 
in New England. A company was formed with a 
capital of four hundred thousand dollars, and Mr. 



THE FOUNDERS OF LOWELL. 173 

Lowell himself undertook the construction of the 
power loom, which was still guarded in Europe as 
a precious secret. After having obtained all possi- 
ble information about it, he shut himself up in a 
Boston store with a man to turn his crank, and ex- 
perimented for months till he had conquered the 
difficulties. In the fall of 1814 the machine was 
ready for inspection. 

" I well recollect," says Mr. Appleton, "the state 
of admiration and satisfaction with which we sat by 
the hour watching the beautiful movement of this 
new and wonderful machine, destined as it evi- 
dently was to change the character of all textile 
industry." 

In a few months the first manufactory was estab- 
lished in Waltham, with the most wonderful suc- 
cess. Henry Clay visited it, and gave a glow- 
ing account of it in one of his speeches, using its 
success as an argument against free trade. It is 
difficult to see what protection the new manufac- 
ture required. The company sold its cotton cloth 
at thirty cents a yard, and they afterwards found 
that they could sell it without loss at less than 
seven cents. The success of the Waltham estab- 
lishment led to the founding of Lowell, Lawrence, 
Nashua, and Manchester. There are now at Lowell 
eighty mills and factories, in which are employed 
sixteen thousand men and women, who produce 
more than three million yards of fabric every week. 
The city has a solid inviting appearance, and there 



174 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

are in the outskirts many beautiful and command- 
ing sites for residences, which are occupied by men 
of wealth. 

But now as to the question above proposed. 
Why are the operatives at Lowell less discontented 
than elsewhere ? It is in part because the able 
men who founded the place bestowed some thought 
upon the welfare of the himian beings whom they 
were about to summon to the spot. They did not, 
it is true, bestow thought enough ; but they thotight 
of it, and they made some provision for proper and 
pleasant life in their proposed town. Mr. Apple- 
ton, who many years ago took the trouble to record 
these circumstances, mentions that the probable 
effect of this new kind of industry upon the charac- 
ter of the people was most attentively considered 
by the founders. In Europe, as most of them 
had personally seen, the operatives were unintel- 
ligent and immoral, made so by fifteen or sixteen 
hours' labor a day, and a beer-shop on every cor- 
ner. They caused suitable boarding-houses to be 
built, which were placed under the charge of wo- 
men known to be competent and respectable. Land 
was assigned and money subscribed for schools, 
for churches, for a hospital. Systematic care was 
taken to keep away immoral persons, and rules 
were established, some of which carried the super- 
vision of morals and manners perhaps too far. 
The consequence was that the daughters of far- 
mers, young women well educated and well-bred, 



TEE FOUNDERS OF LOWELL. 175 

came from all quarters, and found tlie factory life 
sometMng more than endurable. 

But for one thing they would have found it sal- 
utary and agreeable. The plague of factory life is 
the extreme monotony of the employment, and this 
is aggravated in some mills by high temperature 
and imperfect ventilation. At that time the laws 
of health were so little understood that few persons 
saw any hardship in young girls standing on their 
feet thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and even sixteen 
hours a day ! It was considered a triumph when 
the working-day was reduced to thirteen hours. 
Thirty years ago, after prodigious agitation, the 
day was fixed at eleven hours. That was too 
much. It has now been reduced to ten hours ; 
but it is yet to be shown that a woman of aver- 
age strength and stamina can work in a cotton 
mill ten hours a day for years at a stretch, without 
deteriorating in body, in mind, or in character. 

During the first years the girls would come from 
the country, work in the mill a few months, or two or 
three years, and then return to their country homes. 
Thus the injury was less ruinous than it might 
have been. The high character of the Lowell op- 
eratives was much spoken of in the early day. 
Some of the boarding-houses contained pianos upon 
which the boarders played in the evening, and 
there was a magazine called the " Lowell Offering," 
to which they contributed all the articles. These 
things seemed so astonishing that Charles Dickens, 



176 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

when he was first In the United States, in 1842, 
visited Lowell to behold the marvels for himself. 
How changed the world in forty yqars ! Few per- 
sons now living can remember even the cars of 
forty years ago, when there were but a few hundred 
miles of railroad in the United States. 

The train which conveyed the great novelist 
from Boston to Lowell consisted of three cars, a 
gentlemen's car in which smoking was allowed, a 
ladies' car in which no one smoked, and " a negro 
car," which the author describes as a " great, blun- 
dering, clumsy chest, such as Gulliver put to sea in 
from the kingdom of Brobdingnag." Where is 
now the negro car ? It is gone to rejoin its elder 
brother, the negTo pew. The white people's cars 
he describes as " large, shabby omnibuses," with a 
red-hot stove in the middle, and the air insuffer- 
ably close. 

He happened to arrive at his first factory in 
Lowell just as the dinner hour was over, and the 
girls were trooping up the stairs as he himself as- 
cended. How strange his comments now appear 
to us ! If we read them by the light of to-day, we 
find them patronizing and snobbish; but at that 
day they were far in advance of the feelings and 
opinions of the comfortable class. He observed 
that the girls were all weU- dressed, extremely 
clean, with serviceable bonnets, good warm cloaks 
and shawls, and their feet well protected both 
against wet and cold. He felt it necessary, as he 



THE FOUNDERS OF LOWELL. 177 

was writing for English readers, to apologize for 
their pleasant appearance. 

" To my thinking," he remarks, " they were not 
dressed above their condition ; for I like to see the 
humbler classes of society careful of their dress 
and appearance, and even, if they please, decorated 
with such little trinkets as come within the com- 
pass of their means." 

He alluded to the " Lowell Offering," a monthly 
magazine, " written, edited, and published," as its 
cover informed the public, " by female operatives 
employed in the mills." Mr. Dickens praised 
this magazine in an extremely ingenious manner. 
He could not claim that the literature of the work 
was of a very high order, because that would not 
have been true. He said : — 

" Its merits will compare advantageously with a 
great many English Annuals." 

That is really an exquisite touch of satire. He 
went on to say : — 

" Many of its tales inculcate habits of self-denial 
and contentment, and teach good doctrines of en- 
larged benevolence. A strong feeling for the beau- 
ties of nature, as displayed in the solitudes the 
writers have left at home, breathes through its 
pages like wholesome village air. ... It has very 
scant allusion to fine clothes, fine marriages, fine 
houses, or fine life." 

I am so happy as to possess a number of the 
^'LoweU Offering," for August, 1844. It begins 
12 



178 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

witli a pretty little story called " A Flower Dream,'* 
which confirms Mr. Dickens's remarks. There are 
two or three amiable pieces of poetry, a very moral 
article upon "Napoleon at St. Helena," one upon 
the tyranny of fashion, in which young ladies are 
advised to " lay aside all glittering ornaments, all 
expensive trappings," and to present instead the 
charms of a cultivated mind and good disposition. 
There is one article in the number which Mr. Dick- 
ens would have enjoyed for its own sake. It is " A 
Letter from Susan ; " Susan being a " mill girl," 
as she honestly calls herself. She describes the life 
of the girls in the mill and in the boarding-house. 
She gives an excellent character both to her com- 
panions and to the overseers, one of whom had 
lately given her a bouquet from his own garden ; 
and the mills themselves, she remarks, were sur- 
rounded with green lawns kept fresh all the sum- 
mer by irrigation, with beds of flowers to relieve 
their monotony. 

According to Susan, the mills themselves were 
pleasant places, the rooms being " high, very light, 
kept nicely whitewashed, and extremely neat, with 
many plants in the window- seats, and white cotton 
curtains to the windows." 

" Then," says Susan, " the girls dress so neatly, 
and are so pretty. The mill girls are the prettiest 
in the city. You wonder how they can keep so 
neat. Why not ? There are no restrictions as to 
the number of pieces to be washed in the boarding. 



THE FOUNDERS OF LOWELL. 179 

houses. You say you do not see how we can have 
so many conveniences and comforts at the price 
we pay for board. You must remember that the 
boarding-houses belong to the company, and are let 
to the tenants far below the usual city rents." 

Much has changed in Lowell since that day, and 
it is probable that few mill girls would now describe 
their life as favorably as Susan did in 1844. Never- 
theless, the present generation of operatives derive 
much good from the thoughtful and patriotic care 
of the founders. More requires to be done. A 
large public park should be laid out in each of 
those great centres of industry. The abodes of the 
operatives in many instances are greatly in need of 
improvement. There is need of half-day schools 
for children who are obliged to assist their parents. 
Wherever it is possible, there should be attached to 
every house a piece of ground for a garden. The 
saying of the old philosopher is as true now as it 
was in the- simple old times when it was uttered : 
" The way to have good servants is to be a good 
master." 



ROBEET OWEN, 

COTTON-MANUFACTUREE. 



The agitation of labor questions recalls attention 
to Robert Owen, who spent a great fortune and a 
long life in endeavoring to show workingmen how 
to improve their condition by cooperation. A more 
benevolent spirit never animated a human form 
than his ; his very failures were more creditable 
than some of the successes which history vaunts. 

At the age of ten years, Robert Owen, the son 
of a Welsh saddler, arrived in London, consigned 
to the care of an elder brother, to push his fortune. 
His school-days were over, and there was nothing 
for him but hard work in some lowly occupation. 
At the end of six weeks he found a situation as 
shop-boy in a dry-goods store at Stamford, in the 
east of England ; wages, for the first year, his 
board and lodging; for the second year, eight 
pounds in addition ; and a gradual increase there- 
after. In this employment he remained four years, 
and then, although very happily situated, he made 
up his mind to return to London to push his for. 
tune more rapidly. 



ROBERT OWEN. 181 

Being large and forward for Ms age, a hand- 
some, prompt, active, engaging youtli, he soon ob- 
tained a situation in a dry-goods store on old Lon- 
don Bridge, at a salary of twenty-five pounds a year 
and his board. But he had to work unreasonably 
hard, often being obliged to sit up haK the night 
putting away the goods, and sometimes going to 
bed so tired that he could hardly crawl up stairs. 
All the clerks had to be in the store ready for busi- 
ness at eight in the morning. This was about the 
year 1786, when men were accustomed to have 
their hair elaborately arranged. 

" Boy as I was," he once wrote, " I had to wait 
my turn for the hair-dresser to powder and poma- 
tum and curl my hair — two large curls on each 
side and a stiff pigtail. And until this was all 
nicely done no one thought of presenting himself 
behind the counter." 

The lad endured this painful servitude for six 
months, at the end of which he found a better situa- 
tion in Manchester, the seat of the rising cotton 
trade, and there he remained until he was nearly 
nineteen. He appeared to have had no " wild oats " 
to sow, being at all times highly valued by his em- 
ployers, and acquiring in their service habits of 
careful industry, punctuality, and orderliness. He 
must have been a young man both of extraordinary 
virtues and more extraordinary abilities ; for when 
he was but nineteen, one of his masters offered to 
take him as an equal partner, to furnish all the 



182 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

capital, and leave him the whole business in a few 
years. There was also an agreeable niece in the 
family, whose affections he had gained without 
knowing it. 

" If I had accepted," he says, " I should most 
likely have married the niece, and lived and died 
a rich Stamford linen-draper." 

I doubt it. I do not believe that the best shop 
in Christendom could have held him long. When 
he declined this offer he was already in business 
for himself manufacturing cotton machinery. This 
business was a failure, his partner proving incom- 
petent ; and he abandoned the enterprise in a few 
months, taking, as his share of the stock, three 
cotton-spinning machines. With these he began 
business for himself as a cotton spinner, hiring 
three men to work his machines, while he superin- 
tended the establishment. He made about thirty 
dollars a week profit, and was going along at this 
rate, not ill satisfied with his lot, when he read 
one morning in the paper an advertisement for a 
factory manager. He applied for the place in 
person. 

" You are too young," said the advertiser. 

" They used to object to me on that score four 
or five years ago," was his reply, " but I did not 
expect to have it brought up now." 

" Why, what age are you ? " 

" I shall be twenty in May next." 

" How often do you get drunk in the week ? " 



ROBERT OWEN. 183 

" I never," said Owen, blushing, " was drunk in 
my life." 

" What salary do you ask ? " 

" Three hundred (pounds) a year." 

" Three hundred a year ! • Why, I have had I 
don't know how many after the place here this 
morning, and all their askings together would not 
come up to what you want." 

" Whatever others may ask, I cannot take less. 
I am making three hundred a year by my own 
business." 

He got the place. A few days after, this lad of 
twenty, who had never so much as entered a large 
factory in his life, was installed manager of an es- 
tablishment which employed five hundred people. 
He conducted himself with consummate prudence 
and skill. For the first six weeks he went about 
the building grave, silent, and watchful, using his 
eyes much and his tongue little, answering ques- 
tions very briefly, and giving no positive directions- 
When evening came, and the hands were dismissed, 
he studied the machinery, the product, and all the 
secrets of the business. In six weeks he was a 
competent master, and every one felt that he was a 
competent master. Of large frame, noble coun- 
tenance, and sympathizing disposition, he won af- 
fection, as well as confidence and respect. In six 
months there was not a better - managed mill in 
Manchester. 

Now began his connection with America, a coun. 



184 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

try to wliich, by and by, he was to give three valu- 
able sons. While managing this mill he bought the 
first two bales of American Sea Island cotton ever 
imported into England, and he advanced one hun- 
dred and seventy pounds to Robert Fulton, his 
fellow-boarder, to help him with his inventions. I 
cannot relate all the steps by which he made his 
way, while still a very young man, to the ownership 
of a village of cotton mills in Scotland, and to a 
union with the daughter of David Dale, a famous 
Scotch manufacturer and philanthropist of that 
day. He was but twenty-nine years of age when 
he found himself at the head of a great community 
of cotton spinners at New Lanark in Scotland. 

Here he set on foot the most liberal and far-reach- 
ing plans for the benefit of the working people and 
their children. He built commodious and beautiful 
school-rooms, in which the children were taught 
better, in some respects, than the sons of the nobil- 
ity were taught at Eton or Harrow. Besides the 
usual branches, he had the little sons and daughters 
of the people drilled regularly in singing, dancing, 
military exercises, and polite demeanor. He made 
one great mistake, due rather to th^ ignorance of 
the age than his own : he over-taught the children 
— the commonest and fatalest of errors to new-born 
zeal. But his efforts generally for the improvement 
of the people were wonderfully successful. 

" For twenty-nine years," as he once wrote to 
Lord Brougham, " we did without the necessity for 



ROBERT OWEN. 185 

magistrates or lawyers ; without a single legal pun- 
ishment ; without any known poors' rates ; without 
intemperance or religious animosities. We re- 
duced the hours of labor, well educated all the chil- 
dren from infancy, greatly improved the condition 
of the adults, and cleared upward of three hundred 
thousand pounds profit." 

Having won this great success, he fell into an 
error to which strong, self-educated men are pecu- 
liarly liable, — he judged other people hy himself. 
He thought that men in general, if they would only 
try, could do as well for themselves and others as 
he had. He thought there could be a New Lanark 
without a Robert Owen. Accustomed all his life 
to easy success, he was not aware how exceptional 
a person he was, and he did not perceive that the 
happiness of the people who worked for him was 
due as much to his authority as a master as to his 
benevolence as a man. The consequence was that 
he devoted the rest of his life to going about the 
world telling people how much better they would be 
off if they would stop competing with one another, 
and act together for their common good. Why 
have one hundred kitchens, one hundred ovens, and 
one hundred cooks, when the work done in them 
could be better done in one kitchen, with one oven, 
by five cooks? This was one question that he asked. 

Here is the steam engine, he would say, doing as 
much work in Great Britain as the labor power of 
two worlds as populous as ours could do without it. 



186 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Yet the mass of the people find life more difficult 
than it was centuries ago. How is this ? Such ques- 
tions Robert Owen pondered day and night, and 
the results he reached were three in number : — 

1. The steam engine necessitates radical changes 
in the structure of society. 

2. Cooperation should take the place of competi- 
tion. 

3. Civilized people should no longer live in cities 
and separate homes, but in communities of fifteen 
hundred or two thousand persons each, who should 
own houses and lands in common, and labor for the 
benefit of the whole. 

In spreading abroad these opinions he spent 
forty of the best years of his life, and the greater 
part of a princely income. At first, and for a con- 
siderable time, such was the magnetism of his pres- 
ence, and the contagion of his zeal, that liis efforts 
commanded the sympathy, and even the approval, 
of the ruling classes of England, — the nobility and 
clergy. But in the fidl tide of his career as a re- 
former he deliberately placed himself in opposition 
to religion. At a public meeting in London he 
declared in his bland, impressive way, without the 
least heat or ill-nature, that all the religions of the 
world, whether ancient or modern. Christian or 
pagan, were erroneous and hurtful. 

Need I say that from that moment the influen» 
tial classes, almost to a man, dropped him ? One of 
the few who did not was the Duke of Kent, the 



ROBERT OWEN. 187 

father of Queen Victoria. He remained a stead- 
fast friend to Owen as long- as he lived. Mr. Owen 
founded a community on his own system. Its fail- 
ure was speedy and complete, as all experiments 
must be which are undertaken ages too soon. He 
came to America and repeated the experiment. Tha* 
also failed in a remarkably short period. Asso- 
ciated with him in this undertaking was his son, 
Robert Dale Owen, who has since spent a long and 
honorable life among us. 

Returning to England, Mr. Owen continued to 
labor in the dissemination of his ideas until the 
year 1858, when he died at the age of eighty-seven. 

Mr. Holyoake, author of " The History of Co- 
operation in England," attributes to the teaching 
of Robert Owen the general establishment in Great 
Britain of cooperative stores, which have been suc- 
cessful. As time goes on it is probable that other 
parts of his system may become available ; and, 
perhaps, in the course of time, it may become pos- 
sible for men to live an associated life in communi- 
ties such as he suggested. But they will never do 
it until they can get Robert Ovs^ens at their head, 
and learn to submit loyally and proudly to the just 
discipline essential to success where a large number 
of persons work together. 



JOHN SMEDLEY, 

STOCKING- MANUFACTURER. 



I WONDER men in a factory town should ever 
have the courage to strike ; it brings such woe and 
desolation upon them all. The first few days, the 
cessation from labor may be a relief and a pleasure 
to a large number — a holiday, although a dull and 
tedious holiday, like a Sunday without any of the 
alleviations of Sunday — Sunday without Sunday 
clothes, Sunday bells, Sunday church, Sunday walks 
and visits. A painful silence reigns in the town. 
People discover that the factory bell calling them 
to work, though often unwelcome, was not a hun- 
dredth part as disagreeable as the silence that now 
prevails. The huge mills stand gaunt and dead ; 
there is no noise of machinery, no puff of steam, no 
faces at the windows. 

By the end of the first week the novelty has 
passed, and the money of some of the improvident 
families is running low. All are upon short allow- 
ance, the problem being to prolong life at the mini- 
mum of expense. The man goes without his meat, 
the mother without her tea, the children without 



JOHN SMEDLEY. 189 

tlie trifling, inexpensive luxuries with wliicli pa- 
rental fondness usually treated them. Before the 
end of the second week a good many are hungry, 
and the workers begin to pine for employment. 
Their muscles are as hungry for exercise as their 
stomachs are for food. The provision dealers are 
more and more cautious about giving credit. The 
bank accoimts, representing months or years of 
self-denying economy, begin to lessen rapidly, and 
careful fathers see that the bulwarks which they 
have painfully thrown up to defend their children 
against the wolf are crumbling away a hundred 
times faster than they were constructed. If the 
strike lasts a month, one half the population suffers 
every hour, and suffers more in mind than in 
body. Anxiety gnaws the soul. Men go about 
pale, gloomy, and despairing ; women sit at home 
suffering even more acutely ; until at last the sit- 
uation becomes absolutely intolerable ; and the 
strikers are fortunate indeed if they secure a small 
portion of the advance which they claimed. 

Terrible as all this is, I am afraid we must admit 
that to just such miseries, sometimes rashly encoun- 
tered, often heroically endured, the workingman 
owes a great part of the improvement in his condi- 
tion which has taken place during the last seventy- 
five years. A strike is like war. It should be the 
last resort. It should never be undertaken except 
after long deliberation, and when every possible ef- 
fort has been made to secure justice by other means. 



190 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

In many instances it is better to submit to a certain 
degree of injustice than resort to a means of redress 
which brings most suffering upon the least guilty. 

Does the reader know how the industrial classes 
were treated in former times? Mr. George Ad- 
croft, president of an important co(5j)erative organi- 
zation in England, began life as a coal miner. He 
has recently given to Mr. Holyoake, author of the 
" History of Cooperation," some information about 
the habits and treatment of English miners only 
forty years ago : — 

" They worked absolutely naked, and their daugh- 
ters worked by their side. He and others were 
commonly compelled to work sixteen hours a day ; 
and, from week's end to week's end, they never 
washed either hands or face. One Saturday night 
(he was then a lad of fifteen) he and others had 
worked till midnight, when there were still wagons 
at the pit's mouth. They had at last refused to 
work any later. The foreman told the employer, 
who waited till they were drawn up to the mouth, 
and beat them with a stout whip as they came to 
the surface." 

So reports Mr. Holyoake, who could produce, if 
necessary, from the records of parliamentary in- 
vestigations, many a ream of similar testimony. In 
truth, workingmen were scarcely regarded — nay, 
they were not regarded — as members of the human 
family. We find proof of this in the ancient laws 
of every country in Europe. In the reign of Ed- 



JOHN SMEDLEY. 191 

ward VI. there was a law against idle workmen 
which shows how they were regarded. Any labor- 
ing man or servant loitering or living idly for the 
space of three days could be branded on the breast 
with the latter V (vagabond) and sentenced to be 
the slave of the person who arrested him for two 
years ; and that person could " give him bread, 
water, or small drink, and refuse him meat, and 
cause him to work by beating, chaining, or other- 
wise." If he should run away from this treatment, 
he could be branded on the face with a hot iron 
with the letter S, and was to be the slave of his 
master for life. 

Nor does there appear to have been any radical 
improvement in the condition of the workingman 
until within the memory of men now alive. When 
Robert Owen made his celebrated journey in 1815 
among the factory towns of Great Britain, for the 
purpose of collecting evidence about the employ- 
ment of children in factories, he gathered facts 
which his son, who traveled with him, speaks of as 
being too terrible for belief. 

" As a rule," says that son (Robert Dale Owen), 
" we found children of ten years old worked regu- 
larly fourteen hours a day, with but half an hour's 
interval for dinner, which was eaten in the factory. 
. . . Some mills were run fifteen, and in excep- 
tional cases sixteen hours a day, with a single set 
of hands ; and they did not scruple to employ chil- 
dren of both sexes from the age of eight. . . . Most 



192 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

of the overseers carried stout leather thongs, and 
we frequently saw even the youngest children se- 
verely beaten." 

This as recently as 1815 ! Mr. Holyoake him- 
self remarks that, in his youth, he never heard one 
word which indicated a kindly or respectful feeling 
between employers and employed ; and he speaks 
of the workshops and factories of those days as 
" charnel-houses of industry." If there has been 
great improvement, it is due to these causes : The 
resistance of the operative class; their growth in 
self-respect, intelligence, and sobriety ; and the hu- 
manity and wisdom of some employers of labor. 

The reader has perhaps seen an article lately 
printed in several newspapers entitled : " Strikes 
and How to Prevent Them," by John Smedley, a 
stocking manufacturer of Manchester, who employs 
about eleven hundred persons. He is at the head 
of an establishment founded about the time of the 
American Revolution by his grandfather ; and dur- 
ing all this long period there has never been any 
strike, nor even any disagreement between the pro- 
prietors and the work-people. 

" My ancestors' idea was," says Mr. Smedley, 
" that those who ride inside the coach should make 
those as comfortable as possible who are compelled, 
from the mere accident of birth, to ride outside." 

That is the secret of it. Mr. Smedley mentions 
some of their modes of proceeding, one of which is 
so excellent that I feel confident it will one day be 



JOHN SMEDLEY. 193 

generally adopted in large factories. A cotton or 
woolen mill usually begins work in this country at 
half-past six, and frequently the operatives live 
half an hour's walk or ride from it. This obliges 
many of the operatives, especially family men and 
women, to be up soon after four in the morning, in 
order to get breakfast, and be at the mill in time. 
It is the breakfast which makes the difficulty here. 
The meal will usually be prepared in haste and 
eaten in haste ; late risers will devour it with one 
eye on the clock ; and of course it cannot be the 
happy, pleasant thing a breakfast ought to be. But 
in Mr. Smedley's mill the people go to work at six 
without having had their breakfast. At eight the 
machinery stops, and all hands, after washing in a 
comfortable wash-room, assemble in what they call 
the dinner-house, built, furnished, and run by the 
proprietors. Here they find good coffee and tea 
for sale at two cents a pint, oatmeal porridge with 
syrup or milk at about ten cents a week ; good 
bread and butter at cost. 

In addition to these articles, the people bring 
whatever food they wish from home. The meal is . 
enjoyed at clean, well-ordered tables. The em- 
ployers keep in their service a male cook and 
female assistants, who will cook anything the peo- 
ple choose to bring. After breakfast, for fifteen 
minutes, the people knit, sew, converse, stroll out 
of doors, or amuse themselves in any way they 
choose. At half -past eight, the manager takes his 



194 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

stand at a desk in the great dinner-room, gives out 
a hymn, which the factory choir sings. Then he 
reads a passage from a suitable book, — sometimes 
from the Bible, sometimes from some other book. 
Then there is another hymn by the choir ; after 
which all hands go to work, the machinery starting 
up again at nine. 

There is similar accommodation for dinner, and 
at six work is over for the day. On Saturdays the 
mill is closed at half-past twelve, and the people 
have the whole afternoon for recreation. All the 
other rules and arrangements are in harmony with 
this exquisite breakfast scheme. 

" We pay full wages," adds Mr. Smedley, " the 
hands are smart and effective. No man ever loses 
a day from drunkenness, and rarely can a hand be 
tempted to leave us. We keej? a supply of dry 
stockings for those women to put on who come 
from a distance and get their feet wet ; and every 
overlooker has a stock of waterproof petticoats to 
lend the women going a distance on a wet night." 

I would like to cross the sea once more for 
the purpose of seeing John Smedley, and placing 
wreaths upon the tombs of his grandfather and 
father. He need not have told us that whenever 
he goes through the shops all the people recognize 
him, and that it is a pleasure to him to be so rec- 
ognized. 

" I wish," he says, " I could make their lot easier, 
for, with all we can do, factory life is a hard one." 



EICHAED COBDEN, 

CALICO PEINTER. 



An American citizen presented to the English 
town of Bradford a marble statue of Richard Cob- 
den. It was formally uncovered by Mr. John 
Bright, in the presence of the mayor and town 
council, and a large assembly of spectators. The 
figure is seven feet in height, and it rests upon a 
pedestal of Scotch granite polished, which bears the 
name of COBDEN encircled by an inscription, 
which summarizes the aims of his public life : — 

" FREE TRADE, PEACE, AND GOOD WILL AMONG 
NATIONS." 

The giver of this costly and beautiful work was 
Mr. G. H. Booth, an American partner in a noted 
Bradford firm. Unhappily Mr. Booth did not live 
to behold his own gift and share in the happiness 
of this interesting occasion. 

"We ought not to be surprised that an American 
should have paid this homage to the memory of 
an English statesman. There are plenty of good 
Americans in this world who were not born in 
America, and Richard Cobden was one of them. 



196 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Wherever there is a human being who can intelli- 
gently adopt, not as a holiday sentiment merely, 
but as a sacred principle to be striven for, the in- 
scription borne upon the Cobden statue : " Free 
trade, peace, and good will among nations," there 
is an American. And this I say although we have 
not yet adopted, as we shall soon adopt, the prin- 
ciple of Free Trade. 

Cobden was one of the best exemplifications 
which our times afford of that high quality of a 
free citizen which we name public spirit. The 
force of this motive drew him away from a busi- 
ness which yielded a profit of a hundred thousand 
dollars a year, to spend time, talent, fortune, and 
life itself, for the promotion of measures which 
he deemed essential to tne welfare of his country- 
men. 

He did this because he could not help doing it. 
It was his nature so to do. Circumstances made 
him a calico printer, but by the constitution of 
his mind he was a servant of the State. 

His father was an English yeoman ; that is, a 
farmer who owned the farm he tilled. During the 
last century such farmers have become in England 
fewer and fewer, until now there ar6 scarcely any 
left ; for there is such a keen ambition among rich 
people in England to own land that a small pro- 
prietor cannot hold out against them. A noble- 
man has been known to give four or five times its 
value for a farm bordering upon his estate, because 



RICHARD COBDEN. 197 

in an old country nothing gives a man so much 
social importance as the ownership of the soil. 
Cobden's father, it appears, lost his property, and 
died leaving nine children with scarcely any pro- 
vision for their maintenance ; so that Richard's 
first employment was to watch the sheep for a 
neighboring farmer, and this humble employment 
he followed on the land and near the residence of 
the Duke of Richmond, one of the chiefs of that pro- 
tectionist party which Cobden destroyed. With 
regard to his education, he was almost entirely seK- 
taught, or, as Mr. Bright observed, in his most cau- 
tious manner : — 

"He had no opportunity of attending ancient 
universities, and availing himself of the advan- 
tages, and, I am afraid I must say, in some degree, 
of suffering from some of the disadvantages, from 
which some of those universities are not free." 

This sly satire of the eloquent Quaker was re- 
ceived by the men of Bradford with cheers ; and, 
indeed, it is true that college education sometimes 
weakens more than it refines, and many of the 
masters of our generation have been so lucky as to 
escape the debilitating process. 

From tending sheep on his father's farm, he was 
sent away at ten years of age to a cheap Yorkshire 
boarding-school, similar in character to the Dothe- 
boys Hall described by Dickens many years after 
in " Nicholas Nickleby." Five miserable years he 
spent at that school, iU-fed, harshly treated, badly 



198 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

taught, without once going home, and permitted to 
write to his parents only once in three months. 
In after life he could not bear to speak of his life 
at school ; nor was he ever quite the genial and 
happy man he might have been if those five years 
had been spent otherwise. 

But here again we see that hardship does not so 
radically injure a child as unwise indulgence. At 
fifteen he entered as a clerk into the warehouse of 
an uncle in London, an uncomfortable place, from 
which, however, he derived substantial advantages. 
The great city itself was half an education to him. 
He learned French in the morning before going to 
business. He bought cheap and good little books 
which are thrust upon the sight of every passer- 
by in cities, and, particularly, he obtained a clear 
insight into the business of his uncle, who was a 
wholesale dealer in muslins and calicoes. 

From clerk he was advanced to the post of com- 
mercial traveler, an employment which most keenly 
gratified his desire to see the world. This was in 
1826, before the days of the railroad, when com- 
mercial travelers usually drove their own gigs. 
The ardent Cobden accomplished his average of 
forty miles a day, which was then considered very 
rapid work. He traversed many parts of Great 
Britain, and not only increased his knowledge of 
the business, but found time to observe the natural 
beauties of his country, and to inspect its ancient 
monuments. He spent two or three years in this 



RICHARD COBDEN. 199 

mode of life, being already the chief support of his 
nttmerous and unusually helpless family. 

At the early age of twenty-four he thought the 
time had come for him to sell his calicoes and mus- 
lins on his own accoimt. Two friends in the same 
business and himseK put together their small capi- 
tals, amounting to five hundred pounds, borrowed 
another five hundred, rode to Manchester on the 
top of the coach named the Peveril of the Peak, 
boldly asked credit from a wealthy firm of calico 
manufacturers, obtained it, and launched into busi- 
ness. It proved to be a good thing for them all. 
In two years the young men were selling fifty or 
sixty thousand pounds' worth of the old men's 
calicoes every six months. In after years Cobden 
often asked them how they could have the courage 
to trust to such an extent three young fellows not 
worth two hundred pounds apiece. Their answer 
was: — 

" We always prefer to trust young men with 
connections and with a knowledge of their trade, 
if we know them to possess character and ability, 
to those who start with capital without these ad- 
vantages, and we have acted on this principle 
successfully in all parts of the world." 

The young firm gained money with astonishing 
rapidity, one presiding over the warehouse in Lon- 
don, one remaining in Manchester, and the other 
free to go wherever the interests of the firm re- 
quired. Cobden visited France and the United 



200 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

States. He was here in 1835, when he thought the 
American people were the vainest in the world of 
their country. He said it was almost impossible 
to praise America enough to satisfy the people. He 
evidently did not think much of us then. Ameri- 
can men, he thought, were a most degenerate race. 
And as for the women : — 

" My eyes," said he, " have not found one rest- 
ing place that deserves to be called a wholesome, 
blooming, pretty woman, since I have been here. 
One fourth part of the women look as if they had 
just recover^id from a fit of the jaundice, another 
quarter would in England be termed in a stage of 
decided consumption, and the remainder are fitly 
likened to our fashionable women when haggard 
and jaded with the dissipation of a London season." 

This was forty-nine years ago. Let us hope that 
we have improved since then. I think I could now 
find some American ladies to whom no part of this 
description would apply. 

After a prosperous business career of a few years 
he left its details more and more to his partners, 
and devoted himself to public affairs. 

Richard Cobden, I repeat, was a public man by 
nature. He belonged to what I call the natural 
nobility of a country ; by which I mean the indi- 
viduals, whether poor or rich, high or low, learned 
or unlearned, who have a true public spirit, and take 
care of the public weal. As soon as he was free 
from the trammels of poverty he fell into the habit 



RICHARD COBDEN. 201 

of taking extensive journeys into foreign countries, 
a thing most instructive and enlarging to a genuine 
nobleman. His first public act was tbe publication 
of a pamphlet called, " England, Ireland and 
America," in which he maintained that American 
institutions and the general policy of the American 
government were sound, and could safely be fol- 
lowed ; particularly in two respects, in maintaining 
only a very small army and navy, and having no 
entangling alliances with other countries. 

" Civilization," said the young pamphleteer, " is 
peace ; war is barbarism. If the great states should 
devote to the development of business and the 
amelioration of the common lot only a small part of 
the treasure expended upon armaments, humanity 
would not have long to wait for glorious results." 

He combated with great force the ancient notion 
that England must interfere in the politics of the 
continent ; and if England was not embroiled in 
the horrible war between Russia and Turkey, she 
owes it in part to Richard Cobden. He wrote also 
a pamphlet containing the results of his observa- 
tions upon Russia, in which he denied that Russia 
was as rich as was generally supposed. He was 
the first to discover what all the world now knows, 
that Russia is a vast but poor country, not to be 
feared by neighboring nations, powerful to defend 
herself, but weak to attack. In a word, he adopted 
a line of argument with regard to Russia very sim- 
ilar to that recently upheld by Mr. Gladstone. 



202 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Like a true American, lie was a devoted friend 
to universal education, and it was in connection 
with tliis subject that he first appeared as a public 
speaker. Mr. Bright said in his oration : — 

" The first time I became acquainted with Mr. 
Cobden was in connection with the great question 
of education. I went over to Manchester to call 
upon him and invite him to Rochdale to speak at a 
meeting about to be held in the school-room of the 
Baptist chapel in West Street. I found him in his 
counting-house. I told him what I wanted. His 
countenance lighted up with pleasure to find that 
others were working in the same cause. He with- 
out hesitation agreed to come. He came and he 
spoke." 

Persons who heard him in those days say that 
his speaking then was very much what it was after- 
ward in Parliament — a kind of conversational elo- 
quence, simple, clear, and strong, without rhetorical 
flights, but strangely persuasive. One gentleman 
who was in Parliament with him mentioned that he 
disliked to see him get up to speak, because he was 
sure that Cobden would convince him that his own 
opinion was erroneous ; " and," said he, " a man 
does not like that to be done." 

Soon after coming upon the stage of active life, 
he had arrived at the conclusion that the public 
policy of his country was fatally erroneous in two 
particulars, namely, the protective system of duties, 
and the habit of interfering in the affairs of other 



RICHARD COBDEN. 203 

nations. At that time even the food of the people, 
their very bread and meat, was stopped at the cus- 
tom houses until a high duty was paid upon them, 
for the " protection " of the farmers and landlords. 
In other words, the whole population of Great Brit- 
ain was taxed at every meal, for 'the supposed ben- 
efit of two classes, those who owned and those who 
tilled the soil. 

Richard Cobden believed that the policy of pro- 
tection was not beneficial even to the protected 
classes, while it was most cruel to people whose 
wages were barely sufficient to keep them alive. 
For several years, aided by Mr. Bright and many 
other enlightened men, he labored by tongue and 
pen, with amazing tact, vigor, persistence, and good 
temper, to convince his countrymen of this. 

The great achievement of his life, as all the world 
knows, was the repeal of those oppressive Corn 
Laws by which the duty on grain rose as the price 
declined, so that the poor man's loaf was kept dear, 
however abundant and cheap wheat might be in 
Europe and America. It was in a time of deep 
depression of trade that he began the agitation. 
He called upon Mr. Bright to enlist his coopera- 
tion, and he found him overwhelmed with grief at 
the loss of his wife, lying dead in the house at the 
time. Mr. Cobden consoled his friend as best he 
could ; and yet even at such a time he could not 
forget his mission. He said to Mr. Bright : — 

" There are thousands and thousands of homes 



204 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

in England at this moment, where wives, mothers, 
and children are dying of hunger ! Now when the 
first paroxysm of your grief is past, I would advise 
you to come with me, and we will never rest until 
the Corn Laws are repealed." 

Mr. Bright joined him. The Anti - Corn - Law- 
League was formed ; such an agitation was made as 
has seldom been paralleled ; but, so difficult is it to 
effect a change of this kind against interested votes, 
that, after all, the Irish famine was necessary to 
effect the rejDcal. As a writer remarks : — 

" It was hunger that at last ate through those 
stone walls of protection ! " 

Sir Robert Peel, the prime minister, a protec- 
tionist, as we may say, from his birth, yielded to 
circumstances as much as to argument, and accom- 
plished the repeal in 1846. When the great work 
was done, and done, too, with benefit to every class, 
he publicly assigned the credit of the measure to 
the persuasive eloquence and the indomitable res- 
olution of Richard Cobden. 

Mr. Cobden's public labors withdrew his atten- 
tion from his private business, and he became em- 
barrassed. His friends made a purse for him of 
eighty thousand pounds sterling, with which to set 
him up as a public man. He accepted the gift, 
bought back the farm upon which he was born, 
and devoted himself without reserve to the public 
service. During our war he was the friend and 
champion of the United States, and he owed his 



RICHARD COBDEN. 205 

premature death to his zeal and friendly regard 
for this country. There was a ridiculous scheme 
coming up in Parliament for a line of fortresses to 
defend Canada against the United States. On one 
of the coldest days of March he went to London 
for the sole purpose of speaking against this pro- 
ject. He took a violent cold, under which he sank. 
He died on that Sunday, the second of April, 1865, 
when Abraham Lincoln, with a portion of General 
Grant's army, entered the city of Richmond. It 
was a strange coincidence. Through four years he 
had steadily foretold such an ending to the strug- 
gle ; but though he lived to see the great day he 
breathed his last a few hours before the news 
reached the British shore. 

There is not in Great Britain, as Mr. Bright 
observed, a poor man's home that has not in it a 
bigger and a better loaf through Richard Cobden's 
labors. His great measure relieved the poor, and 
relieved the rich. It was a good without alloy, as 
free trade will, doubtless, be to all nations when 
their irrepressible Cobdens and their hungry work- 
men force them to adopt it. 

The time is not distant when we, too, shall be 
obliged, as a people, to meet this question of Free 
Trade and Protection. In view of that inevitable 
discussion I advise young voters to study Cob- 
den and Bright, as well as men of the opposite 
school, and make up their minds on the great 
question of the future. 



HENRY BESSEMER. 



Neevous persons who ride in sleeping-ears are 
mucli indebted to Henry Bessemer, to whose invent- 
ive genius they owe the beautiful steel rails over 
which the cars glide so steadily. It was he who 
so simplified and cheapened the process of making 
steel that it can be used for rails. 

Nine people ia ten, I siippose, do not know the 
chemical difference between iron and steel. Iron 
is iron ; but steel is iron mixed with carbon. But, 
then, what is carbon? There is no substance in 
nature of which you can pick up a piece and say, 
This is carbon. And hence it is difficult to explain 
its nature and properties. Carbon is the principal 
ingredient in coal, charcoal, and diamond. Carbon 
is not diamond, but a diamond is carbon crystal- 
lized. Carbon is not charcoal, but in some kinds 
of charcoal it is almost the whole mass. As crys- 
tallized carbon or diamond is the hardest of all 
known substances, so also the blending of carbon 
with iron hardens it into steel. 

The old way of converting iron into steel was 
slow, laborious, and expensive. In India for ages 



HENRY BESSEMER. 207 

the process lias been as follows : pieces of forged 
iron are pnt into a crucible along with a certain 
quantity of wood. A fire being lighted underneath, 
three or four men are incessantly employed in blow- 
ing it with bellows. Through the action of the 
heat the wood becomes charcoal, the iron is melted 
and absorbs carbon from the charcoal. In this way 
small pieces of steel were made, but made at a cost 
which confined the use of the article to small ob- 
jects, such as watch-springs and cutlery. The plan 
pursued in Europe and America, until about twenty- 
five years ago, was similar to this in principle. 
Our machinery was better, and pure charcoal was 
placed in the crucible instead of wood ; but the 
process was long and costly, and only small pieces 
of steel were produced at a time. 

Henry Bessemer enters upon the scene. In 1831, 
being then eighteen years of age, he came up to Lon- 
don from a country village in Hertfordshire to seek 
his fortune, not knowing one person in the metrop- 
olis. He was, as he has since said, " a mere cipher 
in that vast sea of human enterprise." He was a 
natural inventor, of studious and observant habits. 
As soon as he had obtained a footing in London 
he began to invent. He first devised a process for 
copying bas-reliefs on cardboard, by which he could 
produce embossed copies of such works in thou- 
sands at a small expense. The process was so sim- 
ple that in ten minutes a person without skiU could 
produce a die from an embossed stamp at a cost of 
one penny. 



208 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

When his invention was complete he thought 
with dismay and alarm that, as almost all the ex- 
pensive stamps affixed to documents in England 
are raised from the paper, any of them could be 
forged by an office-boy of average intelligence. The 
English government has long obtained an impor- 
tant part of its revenue by the sale of these stamps, 
many of which are high priced, costing as much as 
twenty-five dollars. If the stamp on a will, a deed, 
or other document is not genuine, the document 
has no validity. As soon as he found what mis- 
cliief had been done, he set to work to devise a 
remedy. After several months' experiment and 
reflection he invented a stamp which could neither 
be forged nor removed from the document and 
used a second time. A large business, it seems, 
had been done in removing stamps from old parch- 
ments of no further use, and selling them to be used 
again. 

The inventor called at the stamp office and had 
an interview with the chief, who frankly owned that 
the government was losing half a million dollars a 
year by the use of old stamps ; and he was then 
considering methods of avoiding the loss. Bessemer 
exhibited his invention, the chief feature of which 
was the perforation of the stamp in such a way that 
forgery and removal were equally impossible. The 
commissioner finally agreed to adopt it. The next 
question was as to the comj)ensation of the young 
inventor, and he was given his choice either to 



HENRY BESSEMER. 209 

accept a sum of money or an office for life in the 
stamp office of four thousand dollars a year. As he 
was engaged to be married, he chose the office, and 
went home rejoicing, feeling that he was a made 
man. Nor did he long delay to communicate the 
joyful news to the young lady. To her also he 
explained his invention, dwelling upon the fact 
that a five-pound stamp a hundred years old could 
be taken off a document and used a second time. 

"Yes," said she, "I understand that ; but, surely, 
if all stamps had a date put upon them they could 
not at a future time be used again without detec- 
tion." 

The inventor was startled. He had never thought 
of an expedient so simple and so obvious. A lover 
could not but be pleased at such ingenuity in his 
affianced bride ; but it spoiled his invention ! His 
perforated stamp did not allow of the insertion of 
more than one date. He succeeded in obviating 
this difficulty, but deemed it only fair to communi- 
cate the new idea to the chief of the stamp office. 
The result was that the government simply adopted 
the plan of putting a date upon all the stamps 
afterwards issued, and discarded Bessemer's fine 
scheme of perforation, which would have involved 
an expensive and troublesome change of machin- 
ery and methods. But the worst of it was that the 
inventor lost his office, since his services were not 
needed. Nor did he ever receive compensation for 
the service rendered. 

14 



210 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Thus it was that a young lady changed the stamp 
system of her country, and ruined her lover's chances 
of getting a good office. She rendered him, how- 
ever, and rendered the world, a much greater ser- 
vice in throwing him upon his own resources. They 
were married soon after, and Mrs. Bessemer is still 
living to tell how she married and made her hus- 
band's fortune. 

Twenty years passed, with the varied fortune 
which young men of energy and talent often expe- 
rience in this troublesome world. We find him then 
experimenting in the conversion of iron into steel. 
The experiments were laborious as well as costly, 
since his idea was to convert at one operation many 
tons' weight of iron into steel, and in a few min- 
utes. As iron ore contains carbon, he conceived 
the possibility of making that carbon unite with 
the iron during the very process of smelting. For 
nearly two years he was building furnaces and pull- 
ing them down again, spending money and toil 
with just enough success to lure him on to spend 
more money and toil ; experimenting sometimes 
with ten pounds of iron ore, and sometimes with 
several hundredweight. His efforts were at length 
crowned with such success that he was able to make 
five tons of steel at a blast, in about thirty-five 
minutes, with comparatively simple machinery, and 
with a very moderate expenditure of fuel. 

This time he took the precaution to patent his 
process, and offered rights to all the world at a 



HENRY BESSEMER. 211 

royalty of a shilling per hundredweiglit. His nu- 
merous failures, however, had discouraged the iron 
men, and no one woidd embark capital in the new 
process. He therefore began himself the manu- 
facture of steel on a small scale, and with such 
large profit, that the process was rapidly introduced 
into all the iron-making countries, and gave Mrs. 
Bessemer ample consolation for her early misfor- 
tune of being too wise. Money and gold medals 
have rained in upon them. At the French Exhibi- 
tion of 1868 Mr. Bessemer was awarded a gold 
medal weighing twelve ounces. His process has 
been improved upon both by himself and others, 
and has conferred upon all civilized countries nu- 
merous and solid benefits. We may say of him 
that he has added to the resources of many trades 
a new material. 

The latest device of Henry Bessemer, if it had 
succeeded, would have been a great comfort to the 
Marquis of Lome and other persons of weak diges- 
tion who cross the ocean. It was a scheme for sus- 
pending the cabin of a ship so that it should swing 
free and remain stationary, no matter how violent 
the ship's motion. The idea seems promising, but 
we have not yet heard of the establishment of a 
line of steamers constructed on the Bessemer prin- 
ciple. We may yet have the pleasure of swinging 
from New York to Liverpool. 



JOHN BRIGHT. 

MANUFACTURER. 



Forty-five years ago, when John Bright was 
first elected to the British Parliament, he spoke thus 
to his constituents : — 

" I am a working man as much as you. My 
father was as poor as any man in this crowd. He 
was of your own body entirely. He boasts not, nor 
do I, of birth, nor of great family distinctions. 
What he has made, he has made by his own indus- 
try and successful commerce. What I have comes 
from him and from my own exertions. I come 
before you as the friend of my own class and 
order, as one of the people." 

When these words were spoken, his father, Ja- 
cob Bright, a Quaker, and the son of a Quaker, 
was still alive, a thriving cotton manufacturer 
of Rochdale, ten miles from Manchester. Jacob 
Bright had been a " Good Apprentice," who mar- 
ried one .of the daughters of his master, and had 
been admitted as a partner in his business. He 
was a man of much force and ability, who became 
in a few years the practical head of the concern, 



JOHN BRIGHT. 213 

filially its sole proprietor, and left it to his sons, 
who have carried it on with success for about half 
a century longer. 

Four years ago, on the celebration of John 
Bright's seventieth birthday, he stood face to face 
with fifteen himdred persons in the employment of 
his firm, and repeated in substance what he had 
said once before, that, during the seventy-three 
years of the firm's existence, there had been, with 
one brief exception, uninterrupted harmony and 
confidence between his family and those who had 
worked for them. 

He made another remark on that birthday which 
explains a great deal in his career. It was of par- 
ticular interest to me, because I have long been 
convinced that no man can give himself up to the 
service of the public, with advantage to the public, 
and safety to himself, unless he is practically free 
from the burdens and trammels of private business. 

" I have been greatly fortunate," said Mr. Bright, 
" in one respect — that, although connected with a 
large and increasing and somewhat intricate busi- 
ness, yet I have been permitted to be free from the 
employments and engagements and occupations of 
business by the constant and undeviating generosity 
and kindness of my brother, Thomas Bright." 

The tribute was well deserved. Certainly, no in- 
dividual can successfully direct the industry of fif- 
teen hundred persons, and spend six months of the 
year in London, working night and day as a mem- 



214 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

ler of Parliament. Richard Cobden tried it, and 
broiiglit a flourishing business to ruin by the at- 
tempt, and probably shortened his own life. Even 
with the aid rendered him by his brother, Mr. 
Bright was obliged to withdraw from public life 
for three years in order to restore an exhausted 
brain. 

John Bright enjoyed just the kind of education 
in his youth which experience has shown to be 
the best for the development of a leader of men. 
At fifteen, after attending pretty good Quaker 
schools in the country, where, besides spelling and 
arithmetic, he learned how to swim, to fish, and to 
love nature, he came home, went into his father's 
factory, and became a man of business. He had 
acquired at school love of literature, particularly of 
poetry, which he continued to indulge during his 
leisure hours. You will seldom hear Mr. Bright 
speak twenty minutes without hearing him make an 
apt and most telling quotation from one of the po- 
ets. He possesses in an eminent degree the talent 
of quotation, which is one of the happiest gifts of 
the popular orator. It is worthy of note that this 
manufacturer, this man of the j)eople, this Manches- 
ter man, shows a familiarity with the more dainty, 
outlying, recondite literature of the world than is 
shown by any other member of a house composed 
chiefly of college-bred men. 

In his early days he belonged to a debating so- 
ciety, spoke at temperance meetings, was an ardent 



JOHN BRIGHT. 215 

politician, and, in short, had about the sort of train- 
ing which an American young man of similar cast 
of mind would have enjoyed. John Bright, in fact, 
is one of that numerous class of Americans whom 
the accident of birth and the circumstances of their 
lot have prevented from treading the soil of Amer- 
ica. In his debating society he had good practice 
in public speaking, and on all questions took what 
we may justly call the Quaker side, i. e., the side 
which he thought had most in it of humanity and 
benevolence. He sided against capital punish- 
ment, against the established church, and defended 
the principle of equal toleration of all religions. 

Next to Mr. Gladstone, the most admired 
speaker in Great Britain is John Bright, and there 
are those who even place him first among the liv- 
ing orators of his country. His published speeches 
reveal to us only part of the secret of his power, 
for an essential part of the equipment of an orator 
is his bodily attributes, his voice, depth of chest, 
eye, demeanor, presence. 

The youngest portrait of him which has been 
published represents him as he was at the age of 
thirty-one. If an inch or two could have been ad- 
ded to his stature he would have been as perfect a 
piece of flesh and blood as can ordinarily be found. 
His face was strikingly handsome, and bore the 
impress both of power and of serenity. It was a well- 
balanced face ; there being a full development of 
the lower portion without any bull-dog excess. 



216 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

His voice was sonorous and commanding ; Ms man- 
ner tranquil and dignified. As he was never a 
student at either university, he did not acquire 
the Cambridge nor the Oxford sing - song, but 
has always spoken the English language as dis- 
tinctly and naturally as though he were a native 
American citizen. 

Although of Quaker family, and himself a mem- 
ber of the Society of Friends, he has never used 
the Quaker thee and thou, nor persisted in wear- 
ing liis hat where other men take off theirs. In 
the House of Commons he conforms to the usages 
of the place, and speaks of " the noble lord oppo- 
site," and " my right honorable friend near me," 
just as though the Quakers never had borne their 
testimony against such vanity. In his dress, too, 
there is only the faintest intimation of the Quaker 
cut. He is a Quaker in his abhorrence of war and 
in his feeling of the substantial equality of men. 
He is a Quaker in those few sublime principles in 
which the Quakers, two centuries ago, were three 
centuries in advance of the time. 

For the benefit of young orators, I will mention 
also that he has taken excellent care of his bodily 
powers. As a young man he was a noted cricketer 
and an enthusiastic angler. At all periods of his 
life he has played a capital game at billiards. 
Angling, however, has been his favorite recreation, 
and he has fished in almost all the good streams 
of the northern part of his native island. 



JOHN BRIGHT. 21T 

Nor does he find it necessary to carry a brandy 
flask with him on his fishing excursions. He men- 
tioned some time ago, at a public meeting, that he 
had been a tee-totaler from the time when he set 
up housekeeping thirty-four years before. He said 
he had in his house no decanters, and, so far as he 
knew, no wineglasses. 

Edward Everett used to say that a speaker's 
success before an audience depended chiefly upon 
the thoroughness of his previous preparation. Mr. 
Bright has often spoken extempore with great ef- 
fect, when circumstances demanded it. But his 
custom is to prepare carefully, and in his earlier 
days he used frequently to write his speech and 
learn it by heart. He received his first lesson in 
oratory from a Baptist clergyman of great note, 
whom he accompanied to a meeting of the Bible 
Society, and who afterwards gave an account of 
their conversation. John Bright was then twenty- 
one years of age. 

" Soon a slender, modest young gentleman came, 
who surprised me by his intelligence and thought- 
fulness. I took his arm on the way to the meeting, 
and I thought he seemed nervous. I think it was 
his first public speech. It was very eloquent and 
powerful, and carried away the meeting, but it was 
elaborate, and had been committed to memory. 
On our way back, as I congratulated him, he said 
that such efforts cost him too dear, and asked me 
how I spoke so easily. I said that in his case, as in 



218 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

most, I thought it would be best not to burden the 
memory too much, but, having carefully prepared 
and committed any portion when special effect was 
desired, merely to put down other things in the 
desired order, leaving the wording of them to the 
moment." 

The young man remembered this lesson, and 
acted upon it. He no longer finds it best to learn 
any portions of his speeches by heart, but his ad- 
dresses show a remarkable thoroughness of prep- 
aration, else they could not be so thickly sown as 
they are with pregnant facts, telling figures, and 
apt illustrations. His pudding is too full of plums 
to be the work of the moment. Such aptness of 
quotation as he displays is sometimes a little too 
happy to be spontaneous ; as when, in alluding to 
the difference between men's professions out of of- 
fice and their measures in office, he quoted Thomas 
Moore : — 

" As bees on flowers alighting cease to hum, 
So, settling upon places, Whigs grow dumb." 

So also, in referring to the aristocratic compo- 
sition of the English government, he quoted Mr. 
Lowell's " Biglow Papers " : — 

" It is something like fulfilling the prophecies 
When the first families have all the best offices." 

Again, when lamenting the obstacles put in the 
way of universal education by the rivalries of sect, 
he produced a great effect in the House of Com- 
mons by saying : — 



JOHN BRIGHT. 219 

" We are, after all, of one relig-ion." 

And then he quoted in illustration an impressive 
sentence from William Penn, to the effect that just 
and good souls were everywhere of one faith, and 
"when death has taken off the mask, they will 
know one another, though the diverse liveries they 
wear here make them strangers." 

No man has less need to quote the brilliant ut- 
terances of others than John Bright ; for he posses- 
ses himself the power to speak in epigrams, and to 
make sentences which remain long in the memory. 
Once in his life he found himself in opposition to 
the workingmen of his district, and during the ex- 
citement of an election he was greeted with hoots 
and hisses. He made a remark on the platform 
which all public men making head against opposi- 
tion woidd do well to remember : — 

" Although there are here many of the opera- 
tive classes who consider me to be their enemy, I 
would rather have their ill-will now, while defend- 
ing their interests, than have their ill-will hereafter 
because I have betrayed them." 

One of his homely similes uttered thirty years 
ago, to show the waste and folly of the Crimean 
War, has become a familiar saying in Great Britain. 

" Some men," said he, " because they have got 
government contracts, fancy that trade is good, and 
that war is good for trade. Why, it is but endeav- 
oring to keep a dog alive by feeding him with his 
own tail." 



220 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

This homeliness of speech, when there is strong 
conviction and massive sense behind it, has a pro- 
digious effect upon a large meeting. Once, during 
his warfare upon the Corn Laws, he exclaimed : — ■ 

" This is not a party question, for men of all par- 
ties are united upon it. It is a pantry question — 
a knif e-and-fork question — a question between the 
working millions and the aristocracy." 

So in addressing the work-people of his native 
town, who were on a strike for higher wages at a 
time when it was impossible for the employers to 
accede to their demands without ruin, he expressed 
an obvious truth very happily in saying : — 

"Neither act of parliament nor act of a multi- 
tude can keep up wages." 

I need scarcely say that no combination of phys- 
ical and intellectual powers can make a truly great 
orator. Moral qualities are indispensable. There 
must be courage, sincerity, patriotism, humanity, 
faith in the futui-e of our race. 

His Quaker training was evidently the most in- 
fluential fact of his whole existence, for it gave him 
the key to the moral and political problems of his 
day. It made him, as it were, the natural enemy of 
privilege and monopoly in all their countless forms. 
It suffused his whole being with the sentiment of 
human equality, and showed him that no class 
can be degraded without lowering all other classes. 
He seems from the first to have known that hu- 
man brotherhood is not a mere sentiment, not a 



JOHN BRIGHT. 221 

conviction of the mind, but a fact of nature, from 
which there is no escape ; so that no individual can 
be harmed without harm being done to the whole. 
When he was a young man he summed up all this 
class of truths in a sentence : — 

"The interests of all classes are so intimately 
blended that none can suffer without injury being 
inflicted upon the rest, and the true interest of each 
will be found to be advanced by those measures 
which conduce to the prosperity of the whole." 

Feeling thus, he was one of the first to join the 
movement for Free Trade. When he came upon 
the public stage the Corn Laws, as they were called, 
which sought to protect the interests of farmers 
and landlords by putting high duties upon imported 
food, had consigned to the poor-houses of Great 
Britain and Ireland more than two millions of pau- 
pers, and reduced two millions more to the verge 
of despair. John Bright was the great orator of 
the movement for the repeal of those laws. After 
six years of the best sustained agitation ever wit- 
nessed in a free country, the farmers and land-own- 
ers were not yet convinced. In 1846, however, an 
event occurred which gave the reasoning of Cob- 
den and the eloquence of Bright their due effect 
upon the minds of the ruling class. This event 
was the Irish famine of 1846, which lessened the 
population of Ireland by two millions in one year. 
This awful event prevailed, though it would not 
have prevailed unless the exertions of Cobden and 



222 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Bright liad familiarized the minds of men with the 
true remedy, — which was the free admission of 
those commodities for the want of which people 
were dying. 

On his seventieth birthday Mr. Bright justified 
what he called the policy of 1846. He said to his 
townsmen : — 

" I was looking the other day at one of our wa- 
ges books of 1840 and 1841. I find that the throt- 
tle-piecers were then receiving eight shillings a 
week, and they were working twelve hours a day. 
I find that now the same class of hands are receiv- 
ing thirteen shillings a week at ten hours a day — 
exactly double. At that time we had a blacksmith, 
whom I used to like to see strike the sparks out. 
His wages were twenty-two shillings a week. Our 
blacksmiths now have wages of thirty-four shil- 
lings, and they only work ten hours." 

Poor men alone know what these figures mean. 
They know what an amount of improvement in the 
lot of the industrial class is due to the shortened 
day, the cheaper loaf, the added shillings. 

In a word, the effort of John Bright' s life has 
been to apply Quaker principles to the, government 
of his country. He has called upon ministers to 
cease meddling with the affairs- of people on the 
other side of the globe, to let Turkey alone, to stop 
building insensate ironclads, and to devote their 
main strength to the improvement and elevation of 
their own people. He says to them in substance : 



JOHN BRIGHT. 223 

You may have an historical monarchy and a splen- 
did throne ; you may have an ancient nobility, liv- 
ing in spacious mansions on vast estates ; you may 
have a church hiding with its pomp and mag-nifi- 
cence a religion of humility ; and yet, with all 
this, if the mass of the people are ignorant and 
degraded, the whole fabric is rotten, and is doomed 
at last to sink into ruin. 



THOMAS EDWAED, 

COBBLER AND NATURALIST. 



The strangest story told for a long time is that 
of Thomas Edward, shoemaker and naturalist, to 
whom the Queen of England recently gave a pension 
of fifty pounds a year. He was not a shoemaker 
who kept a shop and gave out work to others, but 
actually worked at the bench from childhood to old 
age, supporting a very large family on the eight or 
nine or ten shillings a week that he earned. And 
yet we find him a member of several societies of 
naturalists, the Linnsean Society among others, and 
an honored, pensioner of the Queen. 

His father was a Scottish linen weaver, and for 
some time a private soldier in a militia regiment 
which was called into active service during the wars 
with Napoleon ; and it was while the regiment 
was stationed at an English sea-port that this re- 
markable child was born. A few months after, 
when the Waterloo victory had given peace to 
Europe, the regiment was ordered home and dis- 
banded, and this family settled at Aberdeen, where 
the father resumed his former occupation. Now 



THOMAS EDWARD. 225 

the peculiar character of Thomas Edward began to 
exhibit itself. He showed an extraordinary fond- 
ness for animals, to the sore distress and torment 
of his parents and their neighbors. 

It was a taste purely natural, for not only was 
it not encouraged, it was strongly discouraged by 
every one who could be supposed to have influence 
over the boy. He disappeared one day when he 
was scarcely able to walk, and when he had been 
gone for some hours he was found in a pig-sty fast 
asleep, near a particularly savage sow and her pigs. 
As soon as he could walk well enough his delight 
was to ramble along the shore and into the country, 
gathering tadpoles, beetles, frogs, crabs, mice, rats, 
and spiders, to the horror of his mother, to say 
nothing of the neighbors,\ for these awful creatures 
escaped into houses near by and appeared to the 
inmates at the most unexpected moments. 

His parents scolded and whipped him, but his 
love of animal life was unconquerable, and the only 
efPect of opposing it was to make him more cun- 
ning in its gratification. They tied the little fel- 
low by his leg to a table, but he drew the table 
up near the fire, burnt the rope in halves, and was 
off for the fields. They hid his coat, but he took 
his elder brother's coat and ran. Then they hid all 
his clothes, but he slipped on an old petticoat and 
had another glorious day out of doors, returning 
with a fever in his veins which brought him to 
death's door. 



226 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

All these things, and many others like them, hap- 
pened when he was still a boy under five years of 
age. Recovering from his fever he resumed his 
old tricks, and brought home one day, wrapped in 
his shirt, a wasp's nest, which his father took from 
him and plunged into hot water. Between four 
and five he was sent to school, his parents thinking 
to keep him out of mischief of this kind. But he 
had not the least interest in school knowledge, and 
constantly played truant ; and when he did come 
to school he brought with him all kinds of horrid 
insects, reptiles, and birds. One morning during 
prayers a jackdaw began to caw, and as the bird 
was traced to the ownership of Thomas Edward, he 
was dismissed from the school in great disgrace. 
His perplexed parents sent him to another school, 
the teacher of which used more vigorous measures 
to cure him of his propensity, applying to his back 
an instrument of torture called " the taws." It 
was in vain. From this second school he was ex- 
pelled, because some horse-leeches, which he had 
brought to school in a bottle, escaped, crept up the 
legs of the other boys, and drew blood from them. 

" I would not take him back for twenty pounds ! " 
said the schoolmaster in horror. 

A third time his father put him at school ; and 
now he experienced the ill consequences of having 
a bad name. A centipede was found upon another 
boy's desk, and he was of coiirse suspected of hav- 
ing brought it into the schoolroom. But it so hap- 



THOMAS EDWARD. 227 

pened that on this one occasion he was innocent ; 
it was another boy's centipede ; and Thomas de- 
nied the charge. The schoolmaster whipped him 
severely for the supposed falsehood, and sent him 
away saying : — 

" Go home, and tell your father to get you on 
board a man-of-war, as that is the best school for 
irreclaimables such as you." 

He went home and declared he would go to no 
more schools, but would rather work. He had now 
reached the mature age of six years, and had been 
turned out of school three times, without having 
learned to write his own name. Soon after, he 
went to work in a tobacco factory on the river 
Don, a short distance out of Aberdeen, and there 
for two happy years he was free to employ all 
his leisure time in investigating animated nature 
around him. His love of natural history grew with 
his growth and strengthened with his strength, so 
that by the time he had completed his eighth year 
he was familiarly acquainted with the animals of 
that region, and had the most lively admiration 
for the more interesting specimens. He watched 
with delight the kingfisher, and loved to distin- 
guish the voices of the different birds. 

But his parents objecting to tlie tobacconist's 
trade, he was apprenticed about his ninth year to a 
shoemaker, — a violent, disreputable character, who 
made ruthless war upon the lad's birds and reptiles, 
searching his pockets for them, and killing them 



228 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

whenever found. The lad bore this misery for 
three years, and then his patience being exhausted, 
and having in his pocket the sum of seven pence, 
he ran away and walked a hundred miles into the 
country to the house of one of his uncles. His uncle 
received him kindly, entertained him a day or two. 
and gave him eighteen pence, upon which the boy 
returned home, and made a bargain with his mas- 
ter by which he received small wages and had com- 
plete control of his leisure time. At eighteen we 
may regard him as fairly launched upon life, a 
journeyman shoemaker, able to earn in good times 
nine shillings a week by laboring from six in the 
morning till nine at night. At that time all mechan- 
ics worked more hours than they do at present, and 
particularly shoemakers, whose sedentary occupa- 
tion does not expend vitality so rapidly as out-of- 
door trades. And what made his case the more dif- 
ficult was, he was a thorough-going Scotchman, and 
consequently a strict observer of Sunday. Con- 
fined though he was to his work fifteen hours a day, 
he abstained on principle from pursuing his nat- 
ural studies on the only day he could call his own. 
He was a night-bird, this Thomas Edward ; and 
as in Scotland the twilight lasts till ten in the even- 
ing and the day dawns at three in the morning, 
there were some hours out of the twenty-four which 
he could employ, and did employ, in his rambles. 
At twenty-three he fell in love with a. pretty girl, 
and married her, his income being: still but nine 



THOMAS EDWARD. 229 

and sixpence a week. His married life was a 
liappy one, for his wife had the good sense to make 
no opposition to his darling pursuits, and let him 
fill their cottage and garden with as many crea- 
tures as he chose, not even scolding him for his very 
frequent absences during the night. Some one 
asked her recently about this, and her reply was : — 

" Weel, he took such an interest in beasts that 
I didna compleen. Shoemakers were then a very 
drucken set, but his beasts keepit him frae them. 
My mon 's been a sober mon all his life, and he 
never negleckit his wark. Sae I let him be." — 

Children were born to them, eleven in all, and 
yet he found time to learn to write, to read some 
books, and to increase constantly his knowledge of 
nature. In order to procure specimens for his col- 
lection, he bought an old shot-gun for a sum equal 
to about a dollar, — such a battered old piece that 
he had to tie the barrel to the stock with a piece of 
string. A cow's horn served for his powder; he 
measured his charge with a tobacco pipe, and car- 
ried his shot in a paper-bag. About nine in the 
evening, carrying his supper with him, he would 
start out and search the country round for animals 
and rare plants as long as he could see ; then eat 
his supper and lie down and sleep till the light re- 
turned, when he would continue his hunting till it 
was time for work. Many a fight he had in the 
darkness with badgers and pole-cats. 

When he had thus been employed eight or nine 



230 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

years, his collection contained two thousand speci- 
mens of animals and two thousand plants, all 
nicely arranged in three hundred cases made 
with his own hands. Upon this collection he had 
founded hopes of getting money upon which to pur- 
sue his studies more extensively. So he took it to 
Aberdeen, six cart loads in all, accompanied by the 
whole family, — wife and five children. It needs 
scarcely to be said that his collection did not suc- 
ceed, and he was obliged to sell the fruit of nine 
years' labor for twenty pounds. Nothing daunted, 
he returned to his cobbler's stall, and began again 
to collect, occasionally encouraged by a neighbor- 
ing naturalist, and sometimes getting a little money 
for a rare specimen. Often he tried to procure 
employment as a naturalist, but unsuccessfully, and 
as late as 1875 we find him writing thus : — 

" As a last and only remaining resource, I betook 
myself to my old and time-honored friend, a friend 
of fifty years' standing, who has never yet forsaken 
me nor refused help to my body when weary, nor rest 
to my limbs when tired — my well-worn cobbler's 
stool. And although I am now like a beast teth- 
ered to his pasture, with a portion of my faculties 
somewhat impaired, I can still appreciate and ad- 
mire as much as ever the beauties and wonders of 
nature as exhibited in the incomparable works of 
our adorable Creator." 

These are cheerful words to come from an old 
man who has enriched the science of his country by 



THOMAS EDWARD. 231 

additions to its sources of knowledge. In another 
letter, written a year or two since, lie says : — 

" Had the object of my life been money instead 
of nature, I have no hesitation in saying that by 
this time I would have been a rich man. But it is 
not the things I have done that vex me so much as 
the things I have not done. I feel that I could 
have accomplished so much more. I had the will, 
but I wanted the means." 

It is in this way that such men feel toward the 
close of their lives. Thomas Edward still lives, in 
his sixty-seventh year, at Banff, in Scotland, rich in 
his pension of fifty pounds a year, which is more 
than twice as much as the income he had when he 
supported by his labor a wife and eleven children. 
Even his specimens now command a price, and he 
is every way a prosperous gentleman. It seems 
a pity that such men cannot have their precious 
little fifty pounds to begin with, instead of to end 
with. But who could pick them out ? What mortal 
eye can discern in a man the genuine celestial fire 
before he has proved its existence by the devotion 
of a lifetime to his object? And even if it could 
be discerned in a young man, the fifty pounds a 
year might quench it. 



EGBERT DICK, 

BAKER AND NATURALIST. 



The most northern county of Scotland is Caith- 
ness, a wild region of mountain, marsh, and rock- 
ribbed headlands, in which the storms of the Atlan- 
tic have worn every variety of fantastic indentation. 
Much of the land has been reclaimed in modern 
days by rich proprietors. There are manufactures 
of linen, wool, rope, and straw, besides important 
fisheries ; so that forty thousand people now find 
habitation and subsistence in the county. There 
are castles, too, ancient and modern, — some in 
ruins, some of yesterday, — the summer home of 
wealthy people from the south. 

The coast is among the most picturesque in the 
world, bearing a strong resemblance to the coast of 
Maine. The reader, perhaps, has never seen the 
coast of Maine. Then let him do so speedily, and 
he will know, as he sails along its bold headlands, 
and its seamed walls of rock rising here and there 
into mountains, how the coast of Caithness looked 
to one of the noblest men that ever lived in it, 
Robert Dick, baker of Thurso. Thurso is the 



ROBERT DICK. 233 

most northern town of this most northern county. 
It is situated on Thurso Bay, which affords a good 
harbor, and it has thus grown to be a place of three 
or four thousand inhabitants. From this town the 
Orkney Islands can be seen, and a good walker 
can reach in a day's tramp Dunnet Head, the lofty 
promontory which ends the Island. 

Here lived, labored, studied, and died, Robert 
Dick, a man whose name should never be pro- 
nounced by intelligent men but with respect. 

He did not look like a hero. When the boys of 
the town saw him coming out of his baker's shop, in 
a tall stove-pipe hat, an old-fashioned dress coat and 
jean trousers, they used to follow him to the shore, 
and watch him as he walked along it with his eyes 
fixed upon the ground. Suddenly he would stop, 
fall upon his hands and knees, crawl slowly onward, 
and then with one hand catch something on the 
sand ; an insect, perhaps. He would stick it upon 
a pin, put it in his hat, and go on his way ; and the 
boys would whisper to one another that there was 
a mad baker in Thurso. Once he picked up a nut 
upon the beach, and said to his companion : — 

" That has been brought by the ocean current 
and the prevailing winds all the way from one of 
the West India Islands." 

He made the most astonishing journeys about 
that fag end of the universe in the pursuit of knowl- 
edge. We read of his walking thirty-two miles in 
a soaking rain to the top of a mountain, and bring- 



234 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

ing home only a plant of white heather. On an- 
other day he walked thirty-six miles to find a pe- 
culiar kind of fern. Again he walked for twenty- 
four hours in hail, rain, and wind, reaching home 
at three o'clock in the morning. But at seven he 
was up and ready for work as usual. He car- 
ried heavy loads, too, when he went searching for 
minerals and fossils. In one of his letters we 
read : — 

" Shouldering an old poker, a four-pound ham- 
mer, and with two chisels in my pocket, I set out. 
. . . What hammering ! what sweating ! Coat 
off ; got my hands cut to bleeding." 

In another letter he speaks of having " three 
pounds of iron chisels in his trousers pocket, a four- 
pound hammer in one hand and a fourteen-pound 
sledge-hammer in the other, and his old beaver hat 
filled with paper and twine." 

But who and what was this man, and why was he 
performing these laborious journeys ? Robert Dick, 
born in 1811, was the son of an excise officer, who 
gave his children a hard stepmother when Robert 
was ten years old. The boy's own mother, all ten- 
derness and affection, had spoiled him for such a 
life as he now had to lead under a woman who 
loved him not, and did not understand his unusual 
cast of character, his love of nature, his wanderings 
by the sea, his coming home with his pockets full 
of wet shells and his trousers damaged by the 
mire. She snubbed him ; she whipped him. He 



ROBERT DICK. 235 

bore her ill treatment with wonderful patience ; 
but it impaired the social side of him forever. 
Nearly fifty years after he said to one of his few 
friends : — 

" All my naturally buoyant, youthful spirits were 
broken. To this day I feel the effects. I cannot 
shake them off. It is this that stiU makes me 
shrink from the world." 

At thirteen he escaped from a home blighted by 
this woman, and went apprentice to a baker ; and 
when he was out of his time served as a journey- 
man for three years ; then set up a small business 
for himself in Thurso. It was a very small busi- 
ness indeed ; for at that day bread was a luxury 
which many people of Caithness only allowed them- 
selves on Sundays : their usual fare being oatmeal. 
He was a baker all the days of his life, and his 
business never increased so as to oblige him to 
employ even a baker's boy. He made his bread, 
his biscuit, and his gingerbread without any assist- 
ance, and when it was done, it was sold in his little 
shop by an old housekeeper, who lived with him 
till he died. 

The usual course of his day was this : He was 
up in the morning very early, at any time from 
three to six, according to his plans for the after 
part of the day. He kneaded his bread, worked 
the dough into loaves, put the whole into the oven, 
waited till it was baked, and drew it out. His 
work was then usually done for the day. The old 



236 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

housekeeper sold it as it was called for, and, in case 
her master did not get home in time, she could set 
the sponge in the evening. Usually, he could get 
away from the bake-shop soon after the middle of 
the day, and he had then all the afternoon, the even- 
ing, and the night for studying nature in Caith- 
ness. His profits were small, but his wants were 
few, and during the greater part of his life he was 
able to spare a small sum per annum for the pur- 
chase of books. 

If this man had enjoyed the opportunities he 
would have had but for his mother's death, he 
might have been one of the greatest naturalists 
that ever lived. Nature had given him every req- 
uisite : a frame of iron, Scotch endurance, a poet's 
enthusiasm, the instinct of not believing anything 
in science till he was sure of it, till he had put it 
to the test of repeated observation and experiment. 
Although a great reader, he derived most of his 
knowledge directly from nature's self. He began 
by merely picking up shells, as a child picks them 
up, because they were pretty ; imtil, while still a 
lad, he had a very complete collection all nicely 
arranged in a cabinet and labeled. Youth being 
past, the shy and lonely young man began to study 
botany, which he pursued until he had seen and 
felt everything that grew in Caithness. Next he 
studied insects, and studied with such zeal that in 
nine months he had collected, of beetles alone, two 
hundred and fifty-six specimens. There are still 



ROBERT DICK. 237 

in the Thurso museum two hundred and twenty va- 
rieties of bees, and two hundred and forty kinds of 
butterflies, collected by him. 

Early in life he was powerfully attracted to as- 
tronomy, and read everything he could find upon 
the subject. But he was one of those students whom 
books alone can never satisfy ; and as a telescope 
was very far beyond his means he was obliged to 
devote himself to subjects more within his own 
reach. He contrived out of his small savings to 
buy a good microscope, and found it indispensable. 
Geology was the subject which occupied him long- 
est and absorbed him most. He pursued it with 
untiring and intelligent devotion for thirty years. 
He found the books full of mistakes, because, as he 
said, so many geologists study nature from a gig 
and are afraid to get a little mud on their trousers. 

" When," said he, " I want to know what a rock 
is, I go to it ; I hammer it ; I dissect it. I then 
know what it really is. . . . The science of 



collect factSi, and in course of time geology may 
develop into a science." 

I suppose there never was a man whose love 
of knowledge was more disinterested. He used to 
send curious specimens to Hugh Miller, editor of 
" The Witness " as well as a geologist, and Mr. 
Miller would acknowledge the gifts in his paper ; 
but Robert Dick entreated him not to do so. 

" I am a quiet creature," he wrote, " and do not 



238 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

like to see myself in print at all. So leave it to 
be understood who found tlie old bones, and let 
them guess who can." 

As long as he was in unimpaired health he con- 
tinued this way of life cheerfully enough, refusing 
all offers of assistance. His brother-in-law once 
proposed to send him a present of whiskey. 

" No," said he in reply, " spirits never enter this 
house save when I cannot help it." 

His brother-in-law next offered to send him some 
money. He answered : — 

" God grant you more sense ! I want no sov- 
ereigns. It 's of no use sending anything down 
here. Nothing is wanted. Delicacies would only 
injure health. Hardy is the word with working 
people. Pampering does no good, but much evil." 

And yet the latter days of this great-souled man 
were a woeful tragedy. He was the best baker in 
the place, gave full weight, paid for his flour on 
the day, and was in all respects a model of fair 
dealing. But his trade declined. Competition re- 
duced his profits and limited his sales. When the 
great split occurred in Scotland between the old 
and the free church, he stuck to the old, merely 
saying that the church of his forefathers was good 
enough for him. But his neighbors and customers 
were zealous for the free church ; and one day, when 
the preacher aimed a sermon at him for taking his 
walks on Sunday, he was offended, and rarely went 
again. And so, for various reasons, his business 



ROBERT DICK. 239 

declined ; some losses befell him ; and he injured 
his constitution by exposure and exhausting labors 
in the study of geology. 

There were rich and powerful families near by 
who knew his worth, or would have known it if 
they had themselves been worthy. They looked 
on and saw the noblest heart in Scotland break in 
this unequal strife. They should have set him free 
from his bake-shop as soon as he had given proof 
of the stuff he was made of. He was poet, artist, 
philosopher, hero, and they let him die in his bake- 
house in misery. After his death they performed 
over his body the shameful mockery of a pompous 
funeral, and erected in his memory a paltry monu- 
ment, which will commemorate their shame as long 
as it lasts. His name has been rescued from ob- 
livion by the industry and tact of Samuel Smiles, 
who, in writing his life, has revealed to us a rarer 
and higher kind of man than Robert Burns. 



JOHN DUNCAN, 

WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



Many young men ask nowadays wliat is the 
secret of " success." It were better to inquire also 
how to do without success, since that is the destiny 
of most of us, even in the most prosperous com- 
munities. 

Could there be imagined a more complete " fail- 
ure " than this John Duncan, a Scottish weaver, 
always very poor, at last a pauper, short-sighted, 
bent, shy, unlettered, illegitimate, dishonored in 
his home, not unfrequently stoned by the boys of 
the roadside, and in every particular, according to 
the outward view, a wretched fag-end of human 
natiire ! 

Yet, redeemed and dignified by the love of 
knowledge, he passed, upon the whole, a joyous 
and even a triumphant life. He had a pursuit 
which absorbed his nobler faculties, and lifted him 
far above the mishaps and inconveniences of his 
lowly lot. The queen of his country took an in- 
terest in his pursuits, and contributed to the ease 
of his old age. Learned societies honored him, 



JOHN DUNCAN. 241 

and the illustrious Charles Darwin called him " my 
fellow botanist." 

The mother of John Duncan, a " strong, pretty- 
woman," as he called her, lived in a poor tenement 
at Stonehaven, on the Scottish coast, and supported 
herself by weaving stockings at her own home, and 
in the summer went into the harvest field. He al- 
ways held his mother in honor and tenderness, as 
indeed he ought, for she stood faithfully by the chil- 
dren she ought not to have borne. 

As a boy the future botanist developed an aston- 
ishing faculty of climbing. There was a famous 
old castle upon the pinnacle of a cliff, inaccessible 
except to cats and boys. He was the first to gain 
access to the ancient ruin, and after him the whole 
band of boys explored the castle, from the deep 
dungeons to the topmost turret. 

His first employment led him directly to what 
became a favorite pursuit of his lifetime. By way 
of adding to the slender gains of his mother, he 
extracted the white pith from certain rushes of the 
region, which made very good lamp-wicks for the 
kind of lamps then in use in Scotland. These 
wicks of pith he sold about the town in small 
penny bimdles. In order to get his supply of 
rushes he was obliged to roam the country far and 
wide, and along the banks of streams. When he 
had gathered as many as he could carry he would 
bring them home to be stripped. To the end of 
his days, when he knew familiarly every plant that 



242 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

grew in his native land, he had a particular fond- 
ness for all the varieties of rush, and above all for 
the kind that gave him his first knowledge. 

Then he went to a farmer's to tend cattle, and 
in this employment he experienced the hard and 
savage treatment to which hired boys were so fre- 
quently subjected at that day. Drenched with rain 
after tending his herd all day, the brutal farmer 
would not permit him to go near the fire to dry 
his clothes. He had to go to his miserable bed in 
an out-house, where he poured the water from his 
shoes, and wrung out his wet clothes as dry as he 
could. In that foggy climate his garments were 
often as wet in the morning as he left them in the 
evening, and so days would pass without his having 
a dry thread upon him. 

But it did not rain always. Frequently his herd 
was pastured near the old castle, which, during the 
long summer days, he studied more intelligently, 
and in time learned all about its history and con- 
struction. And still he observed the flowers and 
plants that grew about his feet. It seemed nat- 
ural to him to observe them closely and to learn 
their names and uses. 

In due time he was apprenticed to a weaver. 
This was before the age of the noisy, steaming fac- 
tory. Each weaver then worked at home, at his 
own loom, and could rent, if he chose, a garden 
and a field, and keep a cow, and live a man's life 
upon his native soil. Again our poor, shy appren- 



JOHN DUNCAN. 243 

tlce had one of the hardest of masters. The boy 
was soon able to do the work of a man, and the 
master exacted it from him. On Saturdays the 
loom was usually kept going till midnight, when 
it stopped at the first sound of the clock, for this 
man, who had less feeling for a friendless boy than 
for a dog or a horse, was a strict Sabbatarian. In 
the depth of the Scotch winter he would keep the 
lad at the river-side, washing and wringing out the 
yarn, a process that required the arms to be bare 
and the hands to be constantly wet. His hands 
would be all chilblains and frost-bitten. 

But again we may say it was not always winter. 
In the most dismal lot there are gleams of sun- 
shine. The neighbors pitied and comforted him. 
His tyrant's wife was good to him as far as she 
dared. It was she, indeed, who inspired him with 
the determination to learn to read, and another 
friendly woman gave him regular instruction. He 
was sixteen years old when he learned his alpha- 
bet. A school-girl, the daughter of another wea- 
ver, would come into his shop to hear him read his 
lesson, and tell him how to pronounce the hard 
words. This bright, pretty girl of twelve would 
take her seat on the loom beside the bashful, lanky 
boy, who, with the book close to his eyes and his 
finger on the page, would grope his way through 
the paragraph. 

Other children helped him, and he was soon able 
to get the meanings from the few books at his eom« 



244 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

mand. His solitary walks were still cheered by 
his observation of nature, although as yet he did 
not know there was such a thing as a science of 
botany. He could give no account of the interest 
he took in plants, except that he " loved the pretty 
little things," and liked to know their names, 
and to classify in his rude way those that were 
alike. 

The exactions of his despot wore out at length 
even his astonishing patience. He ran away at 
twenty, and entered upon the life which he lived 
all the rest of his days, that of a weaver, wander- 
ing about Scotland according to his need of work. 
At this period he was not the possessor of a sin- 
gle book relating to his favorite pursuit, and he 
had never seen but one, an old-fashioned work of 
botany and astrology, of nature and superstition, 
by the once famous Culpepper. It required extra 
work for months, at the low wages of a hand-loom 
weaver, to get the money required for the purchase 
of this book, about five dollars. The work misled 
him in many ways, but it contained the names and 
properties of many of his favorite herbs. Better 
books corrected these errors by and by, and he 
gradually gathered a considerable library, each vol- 
ume won by pinching economy and hard labor. 

The sorrow of his life was his most woeful, dis- 
astrous marriage. His wife proved false to him, 
abandoned his home and their two daughters, and 
became a drunken tramp. Every now and then 



JOHN DUNCAN. 245 

she returned to him, appealing to his compassion 
for assistance. I think Charles Dickens must have 
had John Duncan's case in his mind when he wrote 
those powerful scenes of the poor man cursed with 
a drunken wife in " Hard Times," 

But the more miserable his outward life, the 
more diligently he resorted for comfort to his 
darling plants. For many years he groped in 
the dark ; but at length he was put upon the right 
path by one of those accomplished gardeners so 
common in Scotland, where the art of gardening is 
carried to high perfection. He always sought the 
friendship of gardeners wherever he went. Never- 
theless he was forty years old before he became a 
scientific botanist. 

During the rest of his life of forty-four years, 
besides pursuing his favorite branch, he obtained a 
very considerable knowledge of the kindred sciences 
and of astronomy. Being obliged to sell his watch 
in a time of scarcity, he made for himself a pocket 
sun-dial, by which he could tell the time to within 
seven or eight minutes. 

During this period steam was gaining every year 
upon hand power; his wages grew less and less; 
and, as his whole heart was in science, he had no 
energy left for seeking more lucrative employment. 
When he was past eighty-three he would walk 
twelve miles or more to get a new specimen, and 
hold on his way, though drenched with a sudden 
storm. 



246 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

At length, old age and lack of work reduced him 
to actual suffering for the necessaries of life. Mr, 
William Jolly, a contributor to periodicals, heard 
his story, sought him out, and found him so poor as 
to be obliged to accept out-door relief, of which the 
old man was painfully ashamed. He published a 
brief history of the man and of his doings in the 
newspapers. 

" The British people," says Voltaire, " may be 
very stupid, but they know how to give." 

Money rained down upon the old philosopher, 
until a smn equal to about sixteen hundred dollars 
had reached him, which abundantly sufficed for his 
maintenance during the short residue of his life. 
For the first time in fifty years he had a new and 
warm suit of clothes, and he again sat down by his 
own cheerful fire, an independent man, as he had 
been all his life until he could no longer exercise 
his trade. 

He died soon after, bequeathing the money he 
had received for the foundation of scholarships and 
prizes for the encouragement of the study of natu- 
ral science among the boys and girls of his country. 
His valuable library, also, he bequeathed for the 
same object. 



JAMES LACKINGTON, 

SECOND-HAND BOOKSELLER. 



It would seem not to be so very difficult a mat- 
ter to buy an article for fifty cents and sell it for 
seventy-five. Business men know, however, that 
to live and thrive by buying and selling requires a 
special gift, which is about as rare as other spe- 
cial gifts by which men conquer the world. In some 
instances, it is easier to make a thing than to sell it, 
and it is not often that a man who excels in the 
making succeeds equally well in the selling. Gen- 
eral George P. Morris used to say : — 

" I know a dozen men in New York who could 
make a good paper, but among them all I do not 
know one who could sell it." 

The late Governor Morgan of New York had 
this talent in a singular degree even as a boy. His 
uncle sent him to New York, to buy, among other 
things, two or three hundred bushels of corn. He 
bought two cargoes, and sold them to advantage in 
Hartford on his way from the stage office to his 
uncle's store, and he kept on doing similar things 
all his life. He knew by a sort of intuition when 



248 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

it was safe to buy twenty thousand bags of coffee, 
or all the coffee there was for sale in New York, 
and he was very rarely mistaken ; he had a genius 
for buying and selling. 

I have seen car-boys and news-boys who had this 
gift. There are boys who will go through a train 
and hardly ever fail to sell a book or two. They 
improve every chance. If there is a passenger who 
wants a book, or can be made to think he wants 
one, the boy will find him out. 

Now James Lackington was a boy of that kind. 
In the preface to the Memoirs which he wrote of 
his career he described himself as a person " who, 
a few years since, began business with five pounds, 
and now sells one hundred thousand volumes an- 
nually." But in fact he did not begin business 
with five pounds, but with nothing at all. 

He was the son of a drunken shoemaker who lived 
in an English country town, and he had no school- 
ing except a few weeks at a dame's school, at two- 
pence a week. He had scarcely learned his letters 
at that school when his mother was obliged to take 
him away to help her in tending his little brothers 
and sisters. He spent most of his childhood in 
doing that, and, as he remarks, " in running about 
the streets getting into mischief." When he was 
ten years old he felt the stirring of an inborn 
genius for successful traffic. 

He noticed, and no doubt with the hungry eyes 
of a growing boy, an old pie-man, who sold his pies 



JAMES LACKINGTON. 249 

about the streets in a careless, inefficient way, and 
the thought occurred to him that, if he had pies to 
sell, he could sell more of them than the ancient 
pie-man. He went to a baker and acquainted him 
with his thoughts on pie-selling, and the baker soon 
sent him out with a tray full of pies. He showed 
his genius at once. The spirited way in which he 
cried his pies, and his activity in going about with 
them, made him a favorite with the pie-buyers of 
the town ; so that the old pie-man in a few weeks 
lost all his business, and shut up his shop. The 
boy served his baker more than a year, and sold so 
many pies and cakes for him as to save him from 
impending bankruptcy. In the winter time he sold 
almanacs with such success that the other dealers 
threatened to do him bodily mischief. 

But this kind of business would not do to de- 
pend on for a lifetime, and therefore he was bound 
apprentice to a shoemaker at the age of fourteen 
years, during which a desire for more knowledge 
arose within him; He learned to read and write, 
but was still so ashamed of his ignorance that he 
did not dare to go into a bookstore because he did 
not know the name of a single book to ask for. 
One of his friends bought for him a little volume 
containing a translation from the Greek philoso- 
pher Epictetus, a work full of wise maxims about 
life and duty. Then he bought other ancient au- 
thors, Plato, Plutarch, Epicurus, and others. He 
became a sort of Methodist philosopher, for he 



250 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

heard the Methodist preachers diligently on Sun- 
days, and read his Greek philosophy in the even- 
ings. He tells us that the account of Epicurus 
living in his garden upon a halfpenny a day, and 
considering a little cheese on his bread as a great 
treat, filled him with admiration, and he began 
forthwith to live on bread and tea alone, in order 
to get money for his books. After ending his ap- 
prenticeship and working for a short time as a 
journeyman, he married a buxom dairymaid, with 
whom he had been in love for seven years. It was 
a bold enterprise, for when they went to their lodg- 
ings after the wedding they searched their pockets 
carefully to discover the state of their finances, and 
foimd that they had one halfpenny to begin the 
world with. They had laid in provisions for a day 
or two, and they had work by which to procure 
more, so they began their married life by sitting 
down to work at shoemaking and singing together 
the following stanza : 

" Our portion is not large indeed, 
But then how little do we need ! 

For nature's wants are few. 
In this the art of living lies, . 
To want no more than may suffice, 
And make that little do." 

They were as happy as the day was long. Twenty 
times, reports this jolly shoemaker, he and his wife 
sang an ode by Samuel Wesley, beginning : — 

" No glory I covet, no riches I want, 
Ambition is nothing to me ; 



JAMES LACKINGTON. 251 

The one tiling I beg of kind Heaven to grant 
Is a mind independent and free. ' ' 

They needed their cheerful philosophy, for all 
they had to spend on food and drink for a week 
was a sum about equal to one of our dollars. Even 
this small revenue grew smaller, owing to the hard 
times, and poor James Lackington saw his young 
wife pining away under insufficient food and sed- 
entary employment. His courage again saved him. 
After enduring extreme poverty for three years, 
he got together all the money he could raise, gave 
most of it to his wife, and set out for London, 
where he arrived in August, 1774, with two and 
sixpence in his pocket. 

It was a fortunate move for our brave shoemaker. 
He obtained work and good wages at once, soon 
sent for his wife, and their united earnings more 
than supplied their wants. A timely legacy of ten 
pounds from his grandfather gave them a little 
furniture, and he became again a frequenter of 
second-hand bookstores. He could scarcely resist 
the temptation of a book that he wanted. One 
Christmas Eve he went out with money to buy 
their Christmas dinner, but spent the whole sum 
for a copy of Young's "Night Thoughts." His 
wife did not relish this style of Christmas repast. 

" I think," said he to his disappointed spouse, 
" that I have acted wisely ; for had I bought a din- 
ner we should have eaten it to-morrow, and the 
pleasure would have been soon over ; but should we 



252 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

live fifty years longer we shall have the ' Night 
Thoughts ' to feast upon." 

It was his love of books that gave him abundant 
Christmas dinners for the rest of his life. Having 
hired a little shop in which to sell the shoes made 
by himself and his wife, it occurred to him that he 
could employ the spare room in selling old books, 
his chief motive being to have a chance to read the 
books before he sold them. Beginning with a 
stock of half a hundred volumes, chiefly of divinity, 
he invested all his earnings in this new branch, 
and in six months he found his stock of books had 
increased fivefold. He abandoned his shoemak- 
ing, moved into larger premises, and was soon a 
thriving bookseller. He was scrupulous not to sell 
any book which he thought calculated to injure its 
readers, although about this time he found the 
Methodist Society somewhat too strict for him. 
He makes a curious remark on this subject : — 

" I well remember," he says, " that some years 
before, Mr. Wesley told his society at Bristol, in 
my hearing, that he could never keep a bookseller 
six months in his flock." 

His trade increased with astonishing rapidity, 
and the reason was that he knew how to buy and 
sell. He abandoned many of the old usages and 
traditions of the book trade. He gave no credit, 
which was itself a startling innovation ; but his 
master-stroke was selling every book at the lowest 
price he could afford, thus giving his customers a 



. JAMES LACKINGTON. 253 

fair portion of the benefit of his knowledge and 
activity. He appears to have begun the system by 
which books have now become a part of the fur- 
niture of every house. He bought with extraor- 
dinary boldness, spending sometimes as much as 
sixty thousand dollars in an afternoon's sale. 

As soon as he began to live with some liberality 
kind friends foretold his speedy ruin. Or, as he 
says : — 

" When by the advice of that eminent physician, 
Dr. Lettsom, I purchased a horse, and saved my 
life by the exercise it afforded me, the old adage, 
' Set a beggar on horseback and he '11 ride to the 
devil,' was deemed fidly verified." 

But his one horse became two horses, and his 
chaise a chariot with liveried servants, in which ve- 
hicle, one summer, he made the round of the places 
in which he had lived as a shoemaker, called upon 
his old employers, and distributed liberal sums of 
money among his poor relations. So far from be- 
ing ashamed of his business, he caused to be en- 
graved on all his carriage doors the motto which he 
considered the secret of his success : — 

SMALL PROFITS DO GREAT THINGS. 

In his old age he rejoined his old friends the 
Methodists, and he declares in his last edition that, 
if he had never heard the Methodists preach, in all 
probability he should have remained through life 
" a poor, ragged, dirty cobbler." 



HORACE GEEELEY'S START. 



I HAVE seldom been more interested than in 
hearing Horace Greeley tell the story of his com- 
ing to New York in 1831, and gradually working 
his way into business there. 

He was living at the age of twenty years with 
his parents in a small log-cabin in a new clearing 
of Western Pennsylvania, about twenty miles from 
Erie. His father, a Yankee by birth, had recently 
moved to that region and was trying to raise 
sheep there, as he had been accustomed to do in 
Vermont. The wolves were too numerous there. 

It was part of the business of Horace and his 
brother to watch the flock of sheep, and sometimes 
they camped out all night, sleeping with their feet 
to the fire, Indian fashion. He told me that occa- 
sionally a pack of wolves would come so near that he 
could see their eyeballs glare in the darkness and 
hear them pant. Even as he lay in the loft of his 
father's cabin he could hear them howling in the 
fields. In spite of all their care, the wolves killed 
in one season a hundred of his father's sheep, and 
then he gave up the attempt. 



HORACE GREELETS START. 255 

The family were so poor that it was a matter 
of doubt sometimes whether they could get food 
enough to live through the long winter ; and so 
Horace, who had learned the printer's trade in 
Vermont, started out on foot in search of work in 
a village printing-office. He walked from village 
to village, and from town to town, until at last he 
went to Erie, the largest place in the vicinity. 

There he was taken for a runaway apprentice, 
and certainly his appearance justified suspicion. 
Tall and gawky as he was in person, with tow-col- 
ored hair, and a scanty suit of shabbiest homespun, 
his appearance excited astonishment or ridicule 
wherever he went. He had never worn a good suit 
of clothes in his life. He had a singularly fair, 
white complexion, a piping, whining voice, and 
these peculiarities gave the effect of his being want- 
ing in intellect. It was not until people conversed 
with him that they discovered his worth and intel- 
ligence. He had been an ardent reader from his 
childhood up, and had taken of late years the most 
intense interest in politics and held very positive 
opinions, which he defended in conversation with 
great earnestness and ability. 

A second application at Erie procured him em- 
ployment for a few months in the office of the Erie 
" Gazette," and he won his way, not only to the 
respect, but to the affection, of his companions and 
his employer. That employer was Judge J. M. 
Sterrett, and from him I heard many curious par- 



256 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

ticulars of Horace Greeley's residence in Erie. As 
he was only working in the office as a substitute, 
the return of the absentee deprived him of his 
place, and he was obliged to seek work elsewhere. 
His employer said to him one day : — 

" Now, Horace, you have a good deal of money 
coming to you ; don't go about the town any longer 
in that outlandish rig. Let me give you an order 
on the store. Dress up a little, Horace." 

The young man looked down at his clothes as 
though he had never seen them before, and then 
said, by way of apology : — 

" You see, Mr. Sterrett, my father is on a new 
place, and I want to help him all I can." 

In fact, upon the settlement of his account at the 
end of his seven months' labor, he had drawn for 
his personal expenses six dollars only. Of the rest 
of his wages he retained fifteen dollars for himself, 
and gave all the rest, amounting to about a hun- 
dred and twenty dollars, to his father, who, I am 
afraid, did not make the very best use of all of it. 

With the great sum of fifteen dollars in his 
pocket, Horace now resolved upon a bold move- 
ment. After spending a few days at home, he tied 
up his spare clothes in a bundle, not very large, 
and took the shortest road through the woods that 
led to the Erie Canal. He was going to New 
York, and he was going cheap ! 

A walk of sixty miles or so, much of it through 
the primeval forest, brought him to Buffalo, where 



HORACE GREELEY'S START. 257 

he took passage on the Erie Canal, and after vari- 
ous detentions, he reached Albany on a Thursday 
morning just in time to see the regular steamboat 
of the day move out into the stream. At ten 
o'clock on the same morning he embarked on board 
of a tow-boat, which required nearly twenty-four 
hours to descend the river, and thus afforded him 
ample time to enjoy the beauty of its shores. 

On the 18th of August, 1831, about sunrise, he 
set foot in the city of New York, then containing 
about two hundred thousand inhabitants, one sixth 
of its present population. He had managed his 
affairs with such strict economy that his journey 
of six hundred miles had cost him little more than 
five dollars, and he had ten left with which to be- 
gin life in the metropolis. This sum of money and 
the knowledge of the printer's trade made up his 
capital. There was not a person in all New York, 
so far as he knew, who had ever seen him before. 

His appearance, too, was much against him, for 
although he had a really fine face, a noble fore- 
head, and the most benign expression I ever saw 
upon a human countenance, yet his clothes and 
bearing quite spoiled him. His round jacket made 
him look like a tall boy who had grown too fast for 
his strength; he stooped a little and walked in a 
loose-jointed manner. He was very bashful, and 
totally destitute of the power of pushing his way, 
or arguing with a man who said " No " to him. He 
had brought no letters of recommendation, and had 

17 



258 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

no kind of evidence to show that he had even 
learned his trade. 

The first business was, of course, to find an ex- 
tremely cheap boarding-house, as he had made up 
his mind only to try New York as an experiment, 
and, if he did not succeed in finding work, to start 
homeward while he still had a portion of his money. 
After walking awhile he went into what looked 
to him like a low-priced tavern, at the corner of 
Wall and Broad Streets. 

" How much do you charge for board ? " he 
asked the bar-keeper, who was wiping his decanters 
and putting his bar in trim for the business of 
the day. 

The bar-keeper gave the stranger a look-over and 
said to him : — 

" I guess we 're too high for you." 

" Well how much do you charge? " 

" Six doUars." 

" Yes, that 's more than I can afford." 

He walked on until he descried on the North 
River, near Washington Market, a boarding-house 
so very mean and squalid that he was tempted to 
go in and inquire the price of board there. The 
price was two dollars and a half a week. 

" Ah ! " said Horace, " that sounds more like 
it." 

In ten minutes more he was taking his breakfast 
at the landlord's table. Mr. Greeley gratefully re- 
membered this landlord, who was a friendly Irish. 



HORACE GREELEY'S START. 259 

man by the name of McGorlick. Breakfast done, 
the new-comer sallied forth in quest of work, and 
began by expending nearly half of his capital in 
improving his wardrobe. It was a wise action. He 
that goes courting should dress in his best, partic= 
ularly if he courts so capricious a jade as Fortune. 

Then he began the weary round of the printing- 
offices, seeking for work and finding none, all day 
long. He would enter an office and ask in his 
whining note : — 

" Do you want a hand ? " 

"No," was the invariable reply; upon receiv- 
ing which he left without a word. Mr. Greeley 
chuckled as he told the reception given him at the 
office of the " Journal of Commerce," a newspaper 
he was destined to contend with for many a year 
in the columns of the " Tribune." 

" Do you want a hand ? " he said to David Hale, 
one of the owners of the paper. 

Mr. Hale looked at him from head to foot, and 
then said : — 

" My opinion is, young man, that you 're a runa- 
way apprentice, and you 'd better go home to your 
master." . 

The applicant tried to explain, but the busy pro- 
prietor merely replied : — 

" Be off about your business, and don't bother 
us." 

The young man laughed good-humoredly and re- 
sumed his walk. He went to bed Saturday night 



260 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

thoroughly tired and a little discouraged. On Sun- 
day he walked three miles to attend a church, and 
remembered to the end of his days the delight 
he had, for the first time in his life, in hearing a 
sermon that he entirely agreed with. In the mean 
time he had gained the good will of his landlord and 
the boarders, and to that circumstance he owed his 
first chance in the city. His landlord mentioned 
his fruitless search for work to an acquaintance who 
happened to call that Sunday afternoon. That ac- 
quaintance, who was a shoemaker, had accidentally 
heard that printers were wanted at No. 85 Chat- 
ham Street. 

At half-past five on Monday morning Horace 
Greeley stood before the designated house, and 
discovered the sign, " West's Printing-Office," over 
the second story ; the groimd floor being occupied 
as a bookstore. Not a soul was stirring up stairs 
or down. The doors were locked, and Horace sat 
down on the steps to wait. Thousands of work- 
men passed by ; but it was nearly seven before the 
first of Mr. West's printers arrived, and he, too, 
finding the door locked, sat down by the side of the 
stranger, and entered into conversation with him. 

" I saw," said this printer to me many years af- 
ter, " that he was an honest, good young man, and, 
being a Vermonter myself, I determined to help 
him if I could." 

Thus, a second time in New York already, the 
native quality of the man gained him, at the criti- 



HORACE GREELEY'S START. 261 

cal moment the advantage that decided his destiny. 
His new friend did help him, and it was very much 
through his urgent recommendation that the fore- 
man of the printing-office gave him a chance. The 
foreman did not in the least believe that the green- 
looking young fellow before him could set in type 
one page of the polyglot Testament for which help 
was needed. 

" Fix up a case for him," said he, " and we'll see 
if he can do anything." 

Horace worked all day with silent intensity, and 
when he showed to the foreman at night a printer's 
proof of his day's work, it was found to be the 
best day's work that had yet been done on that most 
difficult job. It was greater in quantity and much 
more correct. The battle was won. He worked 
on the Testament for several months, making long 
hours and earning only moderate wages, saving all 
his surplus money, and sending the greater part of 
it to his father, who was still in debt for his farm 
and not sure of being able to keep it. 

Ten years passed. Horace Greeley from jour- 
neyman printer made his way slowly to partner- 
ship in a small printing-office. He founded the 
" New Yorker," a weekly paper, the best periodical 
of its class in the United States. It brought him 
great credit and no profit. 

In 1840, when General Harrison was nominated 
for the presidency against Martin Van Buren, his 
feelings as a politician were deeply stirred, and he 



262 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

started a little campaign paper called " The Log- 
Cabin," which was incomparably the most spirited 
thing of the kind ever published in the United 
States. It had a circulation of unprecedented ex- 
tent, beginning with forty-eight thousand, and ris- 
ing week after week until it reached ninety thou- 
sand. The price, however, was so low that its 
great sale proved rather an embarrassment than a 
benefit to the proprietors, and when the campaign 
ended, the firm of Horace Greeley & Co. was 
rather more in debt than it was when the first num- 
ber of " The Log-Cabin " was published. 

The little paper had given the editor two things 
which go far towards making a success in business, 
— great reputation and some confidence in him- 
self. The first penny paper had been started. 
The New York " Herald " was making a great stir. 
The " Sun " was already a profitable sheet. And 
now the idea occurred to Horace Greeley to start a 
daily paper which should have the merits of cheap- 
ndfes and abundant news, without some of the qual- 
ities possessed by the others. He wished to found 
a cheap daily paper that should be good and salu- 
tary, as well as interesting. The last number of 
"The Log-Cabin " announced the forthcoming 
" Tribune," price one cent. 

The editor was probably not solvent when he 
conceived the scheme, and he borrowed a thousand 
dollars of his old friend, James Coggeshall, with 
which to buy the indispensable material. He began 



HORACE GREELEY'S START. 263 

witli six hundred subscribers, printed five thousand 
of the first number, and found it difficult to give 
them all away. The " Tribxme " appeared on the 
day set apart in New York for the funeral proces- 
sion in commemoration of President Harrison, who 
died a month after his inauguration. 

It was a chilly, dismal day in April, and all the 
town was absorbed in the imposing pageant. The 
receipts during the first week were ninety-two dol- 
lars ; the expenses five hundred and twenty-five. 
But the little paper soon caught public attention, 
and the circulation increased for three weeks at the 
rate of about three hundred a day. It began its 
fourth week with six thousand ; its seventh week, 
with eleven thousand. The first number contained 
four columns of advertisements ; the twelfth, nine 
columns ; the hundredth, thirteen columns. 

In a word, the success of the paper was immedi- 
ate and very great. It grew a little faster than the 
machinery for producing it could be provided. Its 
success was due chiefly to the fact that the origi- 
nal idea of the editor was actually carried out. He 
aimed to produce a paper which should morally 
benefit the public. It was not always right, but 
it always meant to be. 



JAMES GORDON BENNETT, 

AND HOW HE FOUNDED HIS HEEALD. 



A CELLAR in Nassau Street was the first office 
of the " Herald." It was a real cellar, not a base- 
ment, lighted only from the street, and consequently 
very dark except near its stone steps. The first fur- 
niture of this office, — as I was told by the late Mr. 
Gowans, who kept a bookstore near by, — consisted 
of the following articles : — 

Item, one wooden chair. Item, two empty flour 
barrels with a wide, dirty pine board laid upon 
them, to serve as desk and table. End of the in- 
ventory. 

The two barrels stood about four feet apart, and 
one end of the board was pretty close to the steps, 
so that passers-by could see the pile of " Heralds " 
which were placed upon it every morning for sale. 
Scissors, pens, inkstand, and pencil were at the 
other end, leaving space in the middle for an edito- 
rial desk. 

This was in the summer of 1835, when General 
Jackson was President of the United States, and 
Martin Van Buren the favorite candidate for the 



JAMES GORDON BENNETT. 265 

succession. If the reader had been in New York 
then, and had wished to buy a copy of the saucy 
little paper, which every morning amused and of- 
fended the decorous people of that day, he would 
have gone down into this underground office, and 
there he would have found its single chair occupied 
by a tall and vigorous-looking man about forty 
years of age, with a slight defect in one of his eyes, 
dressed in a clean, but inexpensive suit of summer 
clothes. 

This was James Gordon Bennett, proprietor, ed- 
itor, reporter, book-keeper, clerk, office-boy, and 
everything else there was appertaining to the con- 
trol and management of the New York " Herald," 
price one cent. The reader would perhaps have 
said to him, " I want to-day's ' Herald.' " Bennett 
would have looked up from his writing, and pointed, 
without speaking, to the pile of papers at the end 
of the board. The visitor would have taken one 
and added a cent to the pile of copper coin adja- 
cent. If he had lingered a few minutes, the busy 
writer would not have regarded him, and he could 
have watched the subsequent proceedings without 
disturbing him. In a few moments a woman might 
have come down the steps into the subterranean 
office, who answered the editor's inquiring look by 
telling him that she wanted a place as cook, and 
wished him to write an advertisement for her. This 
would have been entirely a matter of course, for in 
the prospectus of the paper it was expressly stated 



266 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

that persons could have their advertisements writ- 
ten for them at the office. 

The editor himself would have written the ad- 
vertisement for her with the velocity of a practiced 
hand, then read it over to her, taking particular 
pains to get the name spelled right, and the address 
correctly stated. 

" How much is it, sir? " 

"Twenty-five cents." 

The money paid, the editor would instantly have 
resumed his writing. Such visitors, however, were 
not numerous, for the early numbers of the paper 
show very few advertisements, and the paper itself 
was little larger than a sheet of foolscap. Small 
as it was, it was with difficulty kept alive from 
week to week, and it was never too certain as the 
week drew to a close whether the proprietor would 
be able to pay the printer's bill on Saturday night, 
and thus secure its reappearance on Monday morn- 
ing. 

There were times when, after paying all the un- 
postponable claims, he had twenty-five cents left, 
or less, as the net result of his week's toil. He 
worked sixteen, seventeen, eighteen' hours a day, 
struggling unaided to force his little paper upon 
an indifferent if not a hostile public. 

James Gordon Bennett, you will observe, was 
forty years old at this stage of his career. Gener- 
ally a man who is going to found anything ex- 
traordinary has laid a deep foundation, and got his 



JAMES GORDON BENNETT. 267 

structure a good way above ground before he is 
forty years of age. But there was he, past forty, 
and still wrestling with fate, happy if he could get 
three dollars a week over for his board. Yet he 
was a strong man, gifted with a keen intelligence, 
strictly temperate in his habits, and honest in his 
dealings. The only point against him was, that he 
had no power and apparently no desire to make 
personal friends. He was one of those who cannot 
easily ally themselves with other men, but must 
fight their fight alone, victors or vanquished. 

A native of Scotland, he was born a Roman 
Catholic, and was partly educated for the priest- 
hood in a Catholic seminary there ; but he was di- 
verted from the priestly office, as it appears, by 
reading Byron, Scott, and other literature of the 
day. At twenty he was a romantic, impulsive, 
and innocent young man, devouring the Waverley 
novels, and in his vacations visiting with rapture 
the scenes described in them. The book, however, 
which decided the destiny of this student was of a 
very different description, being no other than the 
"Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin," a book 
which was then read by almost every boy who read 
at aU. One day, at Aberdeen, a young acquaint- 
ance met him in the street, and said to him : — 
" I am going to America, Bennett." 
« To America ! When ? Where ? " 
" I am going to Halifax on the 6th of April." 
" My dear fellow," said Bennett, " I 'U go with 



268 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

you. I want to see the place where Franklin was 
born." 

Three months after he stepped ashore at the 
beautiful town of Halifax in Nova Scotia, with only- 
money enough in his pocket to pay his board for 
about two weeks. Gaunt poverty was upon him 
soon, and he was glad to earn a meagre subsistence 
for a few weeks, by teaching. He used to speak of 
his short residence in Halifax as a time of severe 
privation and anxiety, for it was a place then of no 
great wealth, and had little to offer to a penniless 
adventurer, such as he was. 

He made his way to Portland, in Maine, before 
the first winter set in, and thence found passage in 
a schooner bound to Boston. In one of the early 
numbers of his paper he described his arrival at 
that far-famed harbor, and his emotions on catch- 
ing his first view of the city. The paragraph is 
not one which we should expect from the editor of 
the "Herald," but I have no doubt it expressed 
his real feelings in 1819. 

"I was alone, young, enthusiastic, uninitiated. 
In my more youthful days I had devoured the en- 
chanting life of Benjamin Franklin written by 
himself, and Boston appeared to me as the residence 
of a friend, an associate, an acquaintance. I had 
also drunk in the history of the holy struggle for 
independence, first made on Bunker Hill. Dor- 
chester Heights were to my youthful imagination 
almost as holy ground as Arthur's Seat or Salis- 



JAMES GORDON BENNETT. 269 

bury Craigs. Beyond was Boston, lier glittering 
spires rising into the blue vault of heaven like bea- 
cons to light a world to liberty." 

In the glow of his first enthusiasm, and having 
nothing else to do, he spent several days in visiting 
the scenes of historic events with which his read- 
ing had made him familiar. But his slender purse 
grew daily more attenuated, and he soon found 
himself in a truly desperate situation, a friendless, 
unprepossessing young man, knowing no trade or 
profession, and without an acquaintance in the city. 
His last penny was spent. A whole day passed 
without his tasting food. A second day went by, 
and still he fasted. He could find no employment, 
and was too proud to beg. In this terrible strait 
he was walking upon Boston Common, wondering 
how it could be that he, so willing to work, and 
with such a capacity for work, should be obliged 
to pace the streets of a wealthy city, idle and starv- 
ing! 

" How shaU I get something to eat ? " he said to 
himself. 

At that moment he saw something glittering 
upon the ground before him, which proved to be a 
silver coin of the value of twelve and a half cents. 
Cheered by this strange coincidence, and refreshed 
by food, he went with renewed spirit in search of 
work. He found it almost immediately. A coun- 
tryman of his own, of the firm of Wells & Lilly, 
publishers and booksellers, gave him a situation as 



270 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

clerk and proof-reader, and thus put him upon the 
track which led him to his future success. 

This firm lasted only long enough to give him 
the means of getting to New York, where he ar- 
rived in 1822, almost as poor as when he left Scot- 
land. He tried many occupations, — a school, lec- 
tures upon political economy, instruction in the 
Spanish language; but drifted at length into the 
daily press as drudge-of-all-work, at wages varying 
from five to eight dollars a week, with occasional 
chances to increase his revenue a little by the odd 
jobbery of literature. 

Journalism was then an imknown art in the 
United States, and no newspaper had anything at 
all resembling an editorial corps. The most im- 
portant daily newspapers of New York were car- 
ried on by the editor, aided by one or two ill-paid 
assistants, with a possible correspondent in Wash- 
ington during the session of Congress. And that 
proved to be James Gordon Bennett's opportunity 
of getting his head a little above water. He filled 
the place one winter of Washington corespondent 
to the New York " Enquirer ; " and while doing so 
he fell in by chance in the CongreBsional library 
with a volume of Horace Walpole's gossiping so- 
ciety letters. He was greatly taken with them, and 
he said to himself : " Why not try a few letters on 
a similar plan from Washington, to be published 
in New York ? " 

He tried the experiment. The letters, which 



JAMES GORDON BENNETT. 271 

were full of personal anecdotes, and gave descrip- 
tions of noted individuals, proved very attractive, 
and gave him a most valuable hint as to what 
readers take an interest in. The letters being 
anonymous, he remained poor and unknown. He 
made several attempts to get into business for him- 
self. He courted and served the politicians. He 
conducted party newspapers for them, without po- 
litical convictions of his own. But when he had 
done the work of carrying elections and creating 
popularity, he did not find the idols he had set up 
at all disposed to reward the obscure scribe to 
whom they owed their elevation. 

But all this while he was learning his trade, 
and though he lived under demoralizing influences, 
he never lapsed into bad habits. What he said of 
himself one day was strictly true, and it was one 
of the most material causes of his final victory : — 

" Social glasses of wine are my aversion ; public 
dinners are my abomination ; all species of gor- 
mandizing, my utter scorn and contempt. When I 
am hungry, I eat ; when thirsty, drink. Wine and 
viands, taken for society, or to stimulate conversa- 
tion, tend only to dissipation, indolence, poverty, 
contempt, and death." 

At length, early in 1835, having accumulated two 
or three hundred dollars, he conceived the notion 
of starting a penny paper. First he looked about 
for a partner. He proposed the scheme to a strug- 
gling, ambitious young printer and journalist, be- 



272 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

ginning to be known in Nassau Street, named Hor- 
ace Greeley. I have heard Mr. Greeley relate the 
interview. 

"Bennett came to me," he said, " as I was stand- 
ing at the case setting type, and putting his hand in 
his pocket pulled out a handful of money. There 
was some gold among it, more silver, and I think 
one fifty-dollar bill. He said he had between two 
and three hundred dollars, and wanted me to go in 
with him and set up a daily paper, the printing to 
be done in our office, and he to be the editor. 

" I told him he had n't money enough. He went 
away, and soon after got other printers to do the 
work and the ' Herald ' appeared." 

This was about six years before the "Tribune " 
was started. Mr. Greeley was right in saying that 
his future rival in journalism had not money enough. 
The little " Herald " was lively, smart, audacious, 
and funny ; it pleased a great many people and 
made a considerable stir ; but the price was too 
low, and the range of journalism then was very 
narrow. It is highly probable that the editor 
would have been baffled after all, but for one of 
those lucky accidents which sometimes happen to 
men who are bound to succeed. 

There was a young man then in the city named 
Brandreth, who had brought a pill over with him 
from England, and was looking about in New York 
for some cheap, effective way of advertising his 
pill. He visited Bennett in his cellar and made an 



JAMES GORDON BENNETT. 273 

arrangement to pay him a certain sum every week 
for a certain space in the columns of the " Herald." 
It was the very thing- he wanted, a little certainty 
to help him over that awful day of judgment which 
comes every week to struggling enterprises, — Sat- 
urday night ! 

Still, the true cause of the final success of the 
paper was the indomitable character of its founder, 
his audacity, his persistence, his power of contin- 
uous labor, and the inexhaustible vivacity of his 
mind. After a year of vicissitude and doubt, he 
doubled the price of his paper, and from that time 
his prosperity was uninterrupted. He turned ev- 
erything to account. Six times he was assaulted 
by persons whom he had satirized in his newspaper, 
and every time he made it tell upon his circulation. 
On one occasion, for example, after relating how 
his head had been cut open by one of his former 
employers, he added : — 

" The fellow no doubt wanted to let out the never 
failing supply of good-humor and wit which has 
created such a reputation for the ' Herald.' . . . 
He has not injured the skull. My ideas in a few 
days will flow as freshly as ever, and he will find 
it so to his cost." 

In this humble, audacious manner was founded 
the newspaper which, in the course of forty-eight 
years, has grown to be one of national and interna- 
tional importance. Its founder died in 1872, aged 
seventy-seven years, in the enjoyment of the largest 



274 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

revenue which had ever resulted from journalism in 
the United States, and leaving to his only son the 
most valuable newspaper property, perhaps, in the 
world. 

That son, the present proprietor, has greatly im- 
proved the " Herald." He possesses his father's 
remarkable journalistic tact, with less objectionable 
views of the relation of the daily paper to the pub- 
lic. His great enterprises have been bold, far- 
reaching, almost national in their character. Mr. 
Frederick Hudson, who was for many years the 
managing editor of the paper, has the following in- 
teresting paragraph concerning father and son : — 

" Somewhere about the year 1866, James Gor- 
don Bennett, Sr., inducted James Gordon Bennett, 
Jr., into the mysteries of journalism. One of his 
first coups was the Prusso- Austrian war. The ca- 
ble transmitted the whole of the King of Prussia's 
important speech after the battle of Sadowa and 
peace with Austria, costing in toUs seven thousand 
dollars in gold." 

He has followed this bold coup with many sim- 
ilar ones, and not a few that surpassed it. Seven 
thousand dollars seems a good deal of money to 
pay for a single feature of one number of a daily 
paper. It was not so much for a paper, single is- 
sues of which have yielded half as much as that in 
clear profit. And the paper was born in a cellar ! 



THEEE JOHN WALTERS, 

AND THEIR NEWSPAPER. 



The reader, perhaps, does not know why the 
London " Times " is the first journal of Europe. I 
will tell him. 

The starting of this great newspaper ninety-nine 
years ago was a mere incident in the development 
of another business. Almost every one who has 
stood in a printing-office watching compositors set 
type must have sometimes asked himself, why not 
have whole words cast together, instead of oblig- 
ing the printer to pick up each letter separately ? 
Such words as and, the, hut, if, is, and even larger 
words, like although and notwithstanding, occur 
very often in all compositions. How easy it would 
be, inexperienced persons think, to take up a long- 
word, such as extraordinary, and place it in posi- 
tion at one stroke. I confess that I had this idea 
myself, long before I knew that any one else had 
ever had it. 

In the year 1785 there was a printer in London 
named John Walter, well-established in business, 
who was fully resolved on giving this system a trial. 



276 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

At great expense and trouble he had all the com- 
monest words and phrases cast together. He 
would give his type-founder an order like this : — 

Send me a hundredweight, made up in separate 
pounds, of heat, cold, wet, dry, murder, fire, dread- 
ful robbery, atrocious outrage, fearful calamity, 
and alarming explosion. 

This system he called logographic printing, — 
logographic being a combination of two Greek 
words signifying word-writing. In order to give 
publicity to the new system, on which he held a 
patent, as well as to afford it a fuller trial, he 
started a newspaper, which he called the "Daily 
Universal Eegister." The newspaper had some lit- 
tle success from the beginning; but the logographic 
printing system would not work. Not only did the 
compositors place obstacles in the way, but the sys- 
tem itself presented difficulties which neither John 
Walter nor any subsequent experimenter has been 
able to surmount. 

" The whole English language," said Walter, in 
one of his numerous addresses to the public, " lay 
before me in a confused arrangement. It consisted 
of about ninety thousand words. This multitudi- 
nous mass I reduced to about five thousand, by 
separating the parcels, and removing the obsolete 
words, technical terms, and common terminations." 

After years of labor this most resolute and ten« 
acious of men was obliged to give it up. It was too 
expensive, too cumbersome, too difficult ; it required 



THREE JOHN WALTERS. 211 

a vast amount of space ; and, in short, it was a 
system which could not, and cannot, be worked to 
profit. But though the logographic printing was 
a faihire, the " Daily Universal Register " proved 
more and more successful. It was a dingy little 
sheet, about twice as large as a sheet of foolscap, 
without a word of editorial, and containing a small 
number of well - selected paragraphs of news. It 
had also occasionally a short notice of the plays 
of the night before, and a few items of what we 
now call society gossip. The advertisements, after 
the paper had been in existence three years, aver- 
aged about fifty a day, most of them very short. 
Its price was threepence, English, equal to about 
twelve cents of our present currencyo The paper 
upon which it was printed was coarse and cheap. 
In the third year of its existence, on the first of 
January, 1788, the name was changed to " The 
Times." The editor humorously explained the 
reasons for changing the name : — 

" ' Boy, bring me the " Register." ' The waiter 
answers, ' Sir, we have no library, but you may see 
it in the New Exchange Coffee House.' ' Then I 
will see it there,' answers the disappointed politi- 
cian, and he goes to the New Exchange Coffee 
House, and calls for the ' Register ' ; upon which 
the waiter tells him he cannot have it, as he is not 
a subscriber ; or presents him with the ' Court and 
City Register,' the ' Old Annual Register,' or the 
' New Annual Register.' " 



278 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

John Walter was not what is commonly called 
an educated man. He was a brave and honest 
Englishman, instinctively opposed to jobbery, and 
to all the other modes by which a corrupt govern- 
ment plunders a laborious people. The consequence 
was that during the first years of his editorial life 
he was frequently in very hot water. When " The 
Times " had been in existence little more than a 
year, he took the liberty of making a remark upon 
the Duke of York, one of the king's dissolute sons, 
saying that the conduct of his Royal Highness had 
been such as to incur His Majesty's just disappro- 
bation. 

For this offense he was arrested and put on trial 
for libel. Being convicted, he was sentenced to pay 
a fine of fifty pounds, to undergo a year's imprison- 
ment in Newgate, to stand in the pillory for one 
hour, and give bonds for his good behavior for the 
next seven years. While he was still in prison, he 
was convicted of two libels : first for saying that 
both the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York 
had incurred the just disapprobation of the king ; 
and secondly, for saying that the Duke of Clarence, 
another son of George III., an officer in the navy, 
had left his station without the permission of his 
commanding officer. For these offenses he was 
condemned to pay fines amoimting to two hundred 
pounds, and to suffer a second year's imprisonment. 
His first year he served out fully, and four months 
of the second, when by the intercession of the 
Prince of Wales he was released. 



THREE JOHN WALTERS. 279 

From this period the newspaper appears to have 
gone forward, without any interruption, to the pres- 
ent day. In due time John Walter withdrew from 
the management, and gave it up to his eldest son, 
John Walter the second, who seems to have pos- 
sessed his father's resolution and energy, with more 
knowledge of the world and a better education. It 
was he who took the first decisive step toward 
placing " The Times " at the head of journalism. 
For many years the Walters had been printers to 
the custom house, a post of considerable profit. 
In 1810 the newspaper discovered and exposed 
corrupt practices in the Navy Department, — prac- 
tices which were subsequently condemned by an 
investigating commission. The administration de- 
prived the fearless editor of the custom house busi- 
ness. As this was not in accordance with the 
usages of English politics, it made a great outcry, 
and the editor was given to understand that, if he 
would wink at similar abuses in future, the pub- 
lic printing should be restored to him. This of- 
fer he declined, saying that he would enter into no 
engagements and accept no favors which would 
diminish, in any degree whatever, the independence 
of the paper. 

This was an immense point gained. It was, as 
I have said, the first step toward greatness. Nor 
do I believe that any newspaper has ever attained 
a genuine and permanent standing in a commu- 
nity until it has first conquered a substantial in- 



280 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

dependence. The administration then tried to ac« 
complish its purpose in another way. During the 
gigantic wars of Napoleon Bonaparte, extending 
over most of the first fifteen years of the present 
century, " The Times " surpassed all newspapers in 
procuring early intelligence from the seat of war. 
The government stooped to the pettiness of stop- 
ping at the outposts all packages addressed to 
"The Times," while allowing dispatches for the 
ministerial journals to pass. Foreign ships bound 
to London were boarded at Gravesend, and papers 
addressed to " The Times " were taken from the 
captain. The editor remonstrated to the Home 
Secretary. He was informed that he might re- 
ceive his foreign papers as a favor from govern- 
ment. Knowing that this would be granted in 
the expectation of its modifying the spirit and 
tone of the newspaper, he declined to accept as a 
favor that which he claimed as a right. The con- 
sequence was that the paper suffered much in- 
convenience from the loss or delay of imported 
packages. But this inconvenience was of small 
account compared with the prestige which such 
complimentary persecution conferred. 

Another remarkable feature of the system upon 
which " The Times " has been conducted is the 
liberality with which it has compensated those who 
served it. Writing is a peculiar kind of industry, 
and demands so strenuous and intense an exertion 
of the vital forces, that no one will ever get good 



THREE JOHN WALTERS. 281 

writing done who compensates it on ordinaiy com- 
mercial principles. The rule of supply and de- 
mand can never apply to this case. There are 
two things which the purchaser of literary labor 
can do towards getting a high quality of writing. 
One is, to give the writer the amjilest motive to do 
his best ; and the other is, to prevent his writing 
too much. Both these things the conductors of 
" The Times " have systematically done. It is their 
rule to pay more for literary labor than any one 
else pays for the same labor, more than the writer 
himself would think of demanding, and also to af- 
ford intervals of repose after periods of severe ex- 
ertion. 

Until the year 1814, all the printing in the 
world was done by hand, and " The Times " could 
only be struck off at the rate of four hundred and 
fifty copies an hour. Hence the circulation of the 
paper, when it had reached three or four thousand 
copies a day, had attained the utmost development 
then supposed to be possible ; and when such news 
came as that of the battle of Austerlitz, Trafalgar, 
or Waterloo, the edition was exhausted long before 
the demand was supplied. There was a compos- 
itor in the office of " The Times," named Thomas 
Martyn, who, as early as 1804, conceived the idea 
of applying Watt's improved steam-engine to a 
printing press. He showed his model to John Wal- 
ter, who furnished him with money and room in 
which to continue his experiments, and perfect his 



282 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

machine. But the pressmen pursued the inventor 
with such blind, infuriate hate, that the man was 
in terror of his life from day to day, and the 
scheme was given up. 

Ten years later another ingenious inventor, 
named Konig, procured a patent for a steam-press, 
and Mr. Walter determined to give his invention a 
trial at all hazards. The press was secretly set up 
in another building, and a few men, pledged to se- 
crecy, were hired and put in training to work it. 
On the night of the trial the pressmen in " The 
Times " building were told that the paper would 
not go to press until very late, as important news 
was expected from the Continent. At six in the 
morning John Walter went into the press-room, 
and announced to the men that the whole edition of 
" The Times " had been printed by steam during 
the night, and that thenceforward the steam-press 
would be regularly used. He told the men that if 
they attempted violence there was a force at hand 
to suppress it, but if they behaved well no man 
should be a loser by the invention. They should 
either remain in their situations, or receive full 
wages iintil they could procure others. This con- 
duct in a rich and powerful man was no more than 
decent. The men accepted his terms with alacrity. 

A great secret of " The Times' " popularity has 
been its occasional advocacy of the public interest 
to its own temporary loss. Early in its history it 
ridiculed the advertisers of quack medicines, and 



THREE JOHN WALTERS, 283 

has never liesitated to expose unsound projects 
though ever so profusely advertised. Duting the 
railroad mania of 1845, when the railroad adver- 
tisements in " The Times " averaged sixty thousand 
dollars a week, it earnestly, eloquently, and every 
day, week after week, exposed the empty and ru- 
inous nature of the railway schemes. It continued 
this coiu'se until the mighty collapse came which 
fu lfill ed its own prophecies, and paralyzed for a 
time the business of the country. 

Was this pure philanthropy ? It was some- 
thing much rarer than that — it was good sense. 
It was sound judgment. It was not killing the 
goose that laid the golden e^g. 

Old readers of the London " Times " were a lit- 
tle surprised, perhaps, to see the honors paid by 
that journal to its late editor-in-chief. An obit- 
uary notice of several columns was surrounded by 
black lines ; a mark of respect which the paper 
would pay only to members of the royal family, or 
to some public man of universal renown. Never 
before, I believe, did this newspaper avow to the 
world that its editor had a name ; and the editor 
himself usually affected to conceal his professional 
character. Former editors, in fact, would flatly 
deny their connection with the paper, and made 
a great secret of a fact which was no secret at all. 

Mr. Carlyle, in his " Life of Sterling," gives a cu- 
rious illustration of this. Sir Robert Peel, in 1835, 
upon resigning his ministry, wrote a letter to the 



284 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

editor of " The Times," thanking him for the pow- 
erful support which his administration had received 
from that journal. Sir Robert Peel did not pre- 
sume to address this letter to any individual by 
name, and he declared in this letter that the editor 
was unknown to him even by sight. Edward Ster- 
ling replied in a lofty tone, very much as one king 
might reply to another, and signed the letter sim- 
ply " The Editor of ' The Times.' " 

But all this is changed. The affectation of se- 
crecy, long felt to be ridiculous, has been aban- 
doned, and the editor now circulates freely among 
his countrymen in his true character, as the con- 
ductor of the first journal in Europe. At his, 
death he receives the honors due to the office he 
holds and the power he exerts, and his funeral is 
publicly attended by his associates. This is as it 
shoidd be. Journalism has now taken its place as 
one of the most important of the liberal profes- 
sions. Next to statesmanship, next to the actual 
conduct of public affairs, the editor of a leading 
newspaper fills, perhaps, the most important place 
in the practical daily life of the community in which 
he lives ; and the influence of the office is likely to 
increase, rather than diminish. 

Mr. Delane was probably the first individual who 
was ever educated with a distinct view to his becom- 
ing an editor. While he was still a boy, his father, 
a solicitor by profession, received an appointment 
in the office of " The Times," which led to young 



THREE JOHN WALTERS. 285 

Delane's acquaintance with tlie proprietors of the 
journal. It seems they took a fancy to the lad. 
They perceived that he had the editorial cast of 
character, since, in addition to uncommon industry 
and intelligence, he had a certain eagerness for in- 
formation, an aptitude for acquiring it, and a dis- 
crimination in weighing it, which marks the jour- 
nalistic mind. The proprietors, noting these traits, 
encouraged, and, I believe, assisted him to a uni- 
versity education, in the expectation that he would 
fit himself for the life editorial. 

Having begun this course of preparation early, 
he entered the office of " The Times " as editorial 
assistant soon after he came of age, and acquitted 
himself so well that, in 1841, when he was not yet 
twenty-five, he became editor-in-chief. He was 
probably the youngest man who ever filled such a 
post in a daily paper of anything like equal impor- 
tance. This rapid promotion will be thought the 
more remarkable when it is mentioned that he 
never wrote an editorial in his life. " The Times " 
itself says of him : — 

" He never was a writer. He never even at- 
tempted to write anything, except reports and let- 
ters. These he had to do, and he did them well. 
He had a large staff of writers, and it was not 
necessary he should write, except to communicate 
with them." 

His not being a writer was one of his strongest 
points. Writing is a career by itself. The com- 



286 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

position of one editorial of the first class is a very 
hard day's work, and one that leaves to the writer 
but a small residue of vital force. Writing for the 
public is the most arduous and exhausting of all 
industries, and cannot properly be combined with 
any other. Nor can a man average more than two 
or three editorial articles a week such as "The 
Times " prints every day. It was an immense ad- 
vantage to the paper to have an editor who was 
never tempted to waste any of his strength upon 
the toil of composition. " The Times " prints daily 
. three editorial articles, which cost the paper on an 
average fifty dollars each. Mr. Delane himself 
mentioned this during his visit to this country. 

There was one quality of his editorship which we 
ought not to overlook. It was totally free from 
personalities. I have been in the habit for a long 
time of reading " The Times " — not regularly but 
very frequently, and sometimes every day for a con- 
siderable period ; but I have never seen an indi- 
vidual disrespectfully mentioned in the paper. An 
opinion may be denounced ; but the individual hold- 
ing that opinion is invariably spoken of with de- 
cency. "The Times" has frequently objected to 
the course pursued by Mr. Gladstone ; but the man 
himself is treated with precisely the same respect 
as he would be if he were an invited guest at the 
editor's table. 

"The Times," being a human institution, has 
plenty of faults, and has made its ample share of 



THREE JOHN WALTERS. 287 

mistakes ; but it owes its eminent position chiefly to 
its good qualities, its business ability, its patriot- 
ism, its liberal enterprise, and wise treatment of 
those who serve it. The paper is still chiefly 
owned and conducted by John Walter, the grand- 
son of the founder. 



GEORGE HOPE. 



The story of ttis stalwart and skillful Scotch 
farmer, George Hope, enables us to understand 
what agitators mean by the term " landlordism." 
It is a very striking case, as the reader will admit. 

George Hope, born in 1811, was the son of a 
tenant farmer of the county of East Lothian, now 
represented in Parliament by Mr. Gladstone. The 
farm on which he was born, on which his ancestors 
had lived, and upon which he spent the greater 
part of his own life, was called Fenton Barns. 
With other lands adjacent, it made a farm of about 
eight hundred acres. Two thirds of it were of a 
stiff, retentive clay, extremely hard to work, and 
the rest was little better than sand, of a yellow 
color and incapable of producing grain. 

Two or three generations of Hopes had spent life 
and toil unspeakable upon this unproductive tract, 
without making the least profit by it ; being just 
able to pay their rent, and keep their heads above 
water. They subsisted, reared families, and died, 
worn out with hard work, leaving to their sons, be- 
sides an honest name, only the same inheritance of 



GEORGE HOPE. 289 

struggle and despair. George Hope's motlier tried 
for years to squeeze out of her butter and eggs the 
price of a table large enough for aU her family to 
sit round at once, but died without obtaining it. 

At the age of eighteen years, George Hope took 
hold of this unpromising farm, his parents being in 
declining health, nearly exhausted by their long 
struggle with it. He brought to his task an intel- 
ligent and cultivated mind. He had been for four 
years in a lawyer's office. He had read with great 
admiration the writings of the American Channing ; 
and he now used his intelligence in putting new 
life into this old land. 

The first thing was to acquire more capital ; and 
the only way of accomplishing this was to do much 
of the work himself. Mere manual labor, however, 
would not have sufficed ; for he found himself baf- 
fled by the soil. Part of the land being wet, cold 
clay, and part yellow sand, he improved both by 
mixing them together. He spread sand upon his 
clay, and clay upon his sand, as well as abundant 
manure, and he established a kiln for converting 
some of the clay into tiles, with which he drained 
his own farm, besides selling large quantities of 
tiles to the neighboring farmers. For a time, he 
was in the habit of burning a kiln of eleven thou- 
sand tUes every week, and he was thus enabled to 
expend in draining his own farms about thirteen 
thousand dollars, without going in debt for it. 

He believed in what is called " high farming," 



290 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

and spent enormous sums in fertilizing the soil. 
For a mere top-dressing of g-uano, bones, nitrate of 
soda, or sulphate of ammonia, he spent one spring 
eight thousand dollars. These large expenditures, 
directed as they were by a man who thoroughly un- 
derstood his business, produced wonderful results. 
He gained a large fortune, and his farm became so 
celebrated, that travelers arrived from all parts of 
Europe, and even from the United States, to see it. 
An American caUed one day to inspect the farm, 
when Mr. Hope began, as usual, to express his 
warm admiration for Dr. Channing. The visitor 
was a nephew of the distinguished preacher, and he 
was exceedingly surprised to find his uncle so 
keenly appreciated in that remote spot. 

It is difficult to say which of his two kinds of 
land improved the most under his vigorous treat- 
ment. His sandy soil, the crop of which in for- 
mer years was sometimes blown out of the ground, 
was so strengthened by its dressing of clay as to 
produce excellent crops of wheat ; and his clay 
fields were made among the most productive in 
Scotland by his system of combined sanding, drain- 
ing and fertilizing. 

One of his secrets was that he treated his labor- 
ers with justice and consideration. His harvest- 
homes were famous in their day. When he found 
that certain old-fashioned games caused some of 
his weak teetotalers to fall from grace, he changed 
them for others ; and, instead of beer and toddy, 



GEORGE HOPE. 291 

provided abundance of tea, coffee, strawberries, and 
other dainties. When the time came for dancing, 
he took the lead, and could sometimes boast that 
he had not missed one dance the whole evening. 
In addressing a public meeting of farmers and 
landlords in 1861, he spoke on the subject of im- 
proving the cottages of farm laborers. These were 
some of the sentences which fell from his lips : — 

" Treat your laborers with respect, as men ; en- 
courage their self-respect. Never enter a poor 
man's house any more than a rich man's unless in- 
vited, and then go not to find fault, but as a friend. 
If you can render him or his family a service, by 
advice or otherwise, let it be more delicately done 
than to your most intimate associate. Remember 
how hard it is for a poor man to respect himself. 
He hears the wealthy styled the respectable, and the 
poor, the lower classes ; but never call a man low. 
His being a mail dwarfs, and renders as nothing, 
all the distinctions of an earthly estate." 

The reader sees what kind of person this George 
Hope was. He was as nearly a perfect character 
as our very imperfect race can ordinarily exhibit. 
He was a great farmer, a true captain of industry, 
an honest, intelligent, just, and benevolent man. 
He was, moreover, a good citizen, and this led him 
to take an interest in public matters, and to do his 
utmost in aid of several reasonable reforms. He 
was what is called a Liberal in politics. He did 
what he could to promote the reform bill of Lord 



292 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

John Russell, and he was a conspicuous ally of 
Cobden and Bright in their efforts to break down 
the old corn laws. He remembered that there were 
about five thousand convictions in Grreat Britain 
every year under the game laws, and he strove in 
all moderate and proper ways to have those laws 
repealed. 

And now we come to the point. A certain per- 
son named R. A. Dundas Christopher Nisbet Ham- 
ilton married the heiress of the estate to which the 
farm of George Hope belonged. He thus acquired 
the power, when a tenant's lease expired, to refuse 
a renewal. This person was a Tory, who delighted 
in the slaughter of birds and beasts, and who 
thought it highly impertinent in the tenant of a 
farm to express political opinions contrary to those 
of his landlord. George Hope, toward the end of 
his long lease, offered to take the farm again, at a 
higher rent than he had ever before paid, though 
it was himself who had made the farm more valu- 
able. His offer was coldly declined, and he was 
obliged, after expending the labor and skill of fifty- 
three years upon that land, to leave it, and find an- 
other home for his old age. 

He had fortunately made money enough to buy a 
very good farm for himself, and he had often said 
that he would rather farm fifty acres of his own than 
to be the tenant of the best farm in Europe. This 
" eviction," as it was called, of a farmer so cele- 
brated attracted universal comment, and excited 



GEORGE HOPE. 293 

general indignation. He left his farm like a con- 
queror. Public dinners and services of plate were 
presented to him, and his landlord of many names 
acquired a notoriety throughout Europe which no 
doubt he • enjoyed. He certainly did a very bold 
action, and one which casts a perfect glare of light 
upon the nature of landlordism. 

George Hope died in 1876, universally honored 
in Scotland. He lies buried in the parish of his 
old farm, not far from the home of his fathers. 
On his tombstone is inscribed : — 

"To the memory of George Hope, for many 
years tenant of Fenton Barns. He was the de- 
voted supporter of every movement which tended 
to the advancement of civil and religious liberty, 
and to the moral and social elevation of mankind." 



SIE HENRY COLE. 



He was an " Old Public Functionary " in the 
service of the British people. 

When President Buchanan spoke of himself as 
an Old Public Functionary he was a good deal 
laughed at by some of the newspapers, and the 
phrase has since been frequently used in an op- 
probrious or satirical sense. This is to be regretted, 
for there is no character more respectable, and 
there are few so useful, as an intelligent and pa- 
triotic man of long standing in the public service. 
What one such man can do is shown by the ex- 
ample of Sir Henry Cole, who died a few months 
ago in London after half a century of public life. 

The son of an officer in the British army, he was 
educated at that famous Blue-Coat School which is 
interesting to Americans because Lamb and Cole- 
ridge attended it. At the age of fifteen he re- 
ceived an appointment as clerk in the office of 
Public Records. In due time, having proved his 
capacity and peculiar fitness, be was promoted to 
the post of Assistant Keeper, which gave him a 
respectable position and some leisure. 



SIR HENRY COLE. 295 

He proved to be in an eminent sense the right 
man in the right place. Besides publishing, from 
time to time, curious and interesting documents 
which he discovered in his office, he called atten- 
tion, by a series of vigorous pamphlets, to the cha- 
otic condition in which the public records of Great 
Britain were kept. Gradually these pamphlets 
made an impression, and they led at length to a 
reform in the office. The records were rearranged, 
catalogued, rendered safe, and made accessible to 
students. This has already led to important cor- 
rections in history, and to a great increase in the 
sum of historical knowledge. 

When the subject of cheap postage came up in 
1840, the government offered four prizes of a hun- 
dred pounds each for suggestions in aid of Sir Bow- 
land Hill's plan. One of these prizes was assigned 
to Henry Cole. He was one of the persons who 
first became converts to the idea of penny postage, 
and he lent the aid of his pen and influence to its 
adoption. 

At length, about the year 1845, he entered upon 
the course of proceedings which rendered him one 
of the most influential and useful persons of his 
time. He had long lamented the backward condi- 
tion of arts of design in England, and the conse- 
quent ugliness of the various objects in the sight 
and use of which human beings pass their lives. 
English furniture, wall - papers, carpets, curtains, 
cutlery, garments, upholstery, ranged from the tol- 



296 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

erable to the liideous, and were inferior to the 
manufactures of France and Germany. He or- 
ganized a series of exhibitions on a small scale, 
somewhat similar to those of the American In- 
stitute in New York, which has held a competitive 
exhibition of natural and manufactured objects 
every autumn for the last fifty years. 

His exliibitions attracted attention, and they led 
at length to the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851. 
The merit of that scheme must be shared between 
Henry Cole and Prince Albert. Cole suggested 
that his small exhibitions should, once in five years, 
assume a national character, and invite contribu- 
tions from all parts of the empire. Yes, said 
Prince Albert, and let us also invite competition 
from foreign countries on equal terms with native 
products. 

The Exhibition of 1851 was admirably managed, 
and had every kind of success. It benefited Eng- 
land more than all other nations put together, 
because it revealed to her people their inferiority 
in many branches both of workmanship and de- 
sign. We all know how conceited people are apt 
to become who have no opportunity to compare 
themselves with superiors. Jolm Bull, never over- 
modest, surveyed the Exhibition of 1851, and dis- 
covered, to his great surprise, that he was not the 
unapproachable Bull of the universe which he had 
fondly supposed. He saw himself beaten in some 
things by the French, in some by the Germans, in 



SIR HENRY COLE. 297 

others by the Italians, and in a few (0 wonder !) 
by the Yankees. 

Happily he had the candor to admit this humil- 
iating fact to himself, and he put forth earnest and 
steadfast exertions to bring himself up to the level 
of modern times. 

Henry Cole was the life and soul of the move- 
ment. It was he who called attention to the ob- 
stacles placed in the way of improvement by the 
patent laws, and some of those obstacles, through 
him, were speedily removed. 

During this series of services to his country, he 
remained in the office of Public Records. The 
government now invited him to another sphere 
of labor. They asked him to imdertake the recon- 
struction of the schools of design, and they gave 
him an office which placed him practically at the 
head of the various institutions designed to pro- 
mote the aj)plication of art to manufacture. The 
chief of these now is the Museum of South Ken- 
sington, which is to many Americans the most in- 
teresting object in London. The creation of this 
wonderful museum was due more to him than to 
any other individual. 

It came to pass in this way : After the close of 
the Crystal Palace in 1851, Parliament gave five 
thousand pounds for the purchase of the objects ex- 
hibited which Were thought best calculated to raise 
the standard of taste in the nation. These objects, 
chiefly selected by Cole, were arranged by him for 



298 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

exhibition in temporary buildings of such extreme 
and repulsive inconvenience as to bring opprobrium 
and ridicule upon the undertaking. It was one of 
the most difficult things in the world to excite pub- 
lic interest in the exhibition. But by that energy 
which comes of strong conviction and patriotic feel- 
ing, and of the opportunity given him by his public 
employment, Henry Cole wrung from a reluctant 
Parliament the annual grants necessary to make 
South Kensington Museum what it now is. 

Magnificent buildings, filled with a vast collec- 
tion of precious and interesting objects, greet the 
visitor. There are collections of armor, relics, 
porcelain, enamel, fabrics, paintings, statues, carv- 
ings in wood and ivory, machines, models, and 
every conceivable object of use or beauty. Some 
of the most celebrated pictures in the world are 
there, and there is an art library of thirty thou- 
sand volumes. There are schools for instruction in 
every branch of art and science which can be sup- 
posed to enter into the products of industry. The 
prizes which are offered for excellence in design 
and invention have attracted, in some years, as 
many as two hundred thousand objects. During 
three days of every week admission to this superb 
assemblage of exhibitions is free, and on the other 
three days sixpence is charged. 

The influence of this institution upon British 
manufactures has been in many branches revolu- 
tionary. As the London " Times " said some time 
ago : — 



SIR MENRY COLE. 299 

" There is hardly a household in the country that 
is not the better for the change ; there is certainly 
no manufacture in which design has any place 
which has not felt its influence." 

The formation of this Musemn, the chief work of 
Sir Henry Cole's useful life, was far from exhaust- 
ing his energies. He has borne a leading part in 
all the industrial exhibitions held in London dur- 
ing the last quarter of a century, and served as 
English commissioner at the Paris exhibitions of 
1855 and 1867. 

This man was enabled to render all this service 
to his country, to Europe, and to us, because he 
was not obliged to waste any of his energies in 
efforts to keep his place. Administrations might 
change, and Parliaments might dissolve; but he 
was a fixture as long as he did his duty. When 
his duty was fairly done, and he had completed the 
fortieth year of his public service, he retired on his 
full salary, and he was granted an honorable title; 
for a title is honorable when it is won by good ser- 
vice. Henceforth he was called Sir Henry Cole, 
K. C. B. 

To the end of his life he continued to labor in 
all sorts of good works — a Training School for 
Music, a Training School for Cookery, guilds for 
the promotion of health, and many others. He 
died in April, 1882, aged seventy-four years. 



CHARLES SUMMERS. 



SiHANGERS visiting Melbourne, the chief city of 
Australia, will not be allowed to overlook four 
great marble statues which adorn the public li- 
brary. They are the gift of Mr. W. J. Clark, one 
of the distinguished public men of that growing 
empire. These statues represent, in a sitting pos- 
ture. Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, the Prince of 
Wales, and the Princess of Wales. They are 
larger than life, and, according to the Australian 
press, they are admirable works in every respect. 

They were executed by Charles Summers, a sculp- 
tor long resident in that colony, where he practiced 
his art with great success, as the public buildings 
and private houses of Melbourne attest. Many of 
his works remain in the colony, and he may be said 
to be the founder of his form of art in that part of 
the world. The history of this man's life is so re- 
markable that I think it will interest the reader. 

Sixty years ago, Charles Summers was a little, 
hungry, ragged boy in English Somersetshire, who 
earned four cents a day by scaring the crows from 
the wheat fields. I have seen myself such little fel- 



CHARLES SUMMERS. 301 

lows engaged in this work, coming on duty before 
four in the morning, and remaining till eight in the 
evening, frightening away the birds by beating a 
tin pan with a stick, not unf requently chasing them 
and throwing stones at them. He was the son of a 
mason, who had eight children, and squandered 
half his time and money in the tap-room. Hence, 
this boy, from the age of eight or nine years, smart, 
intelligent, and ambitious, was constantly at work 
at some such employment ; and often, during his 
father's drunken fits, he was the chief support of 
the family. 

Besides serving as scare-crow, he assisted his fa- 
ther in his mason's work, and became a hod-carrier 
as soon as he was able to carry a hod. Sometimes 
he accompanied his father to a distant place in 
search of employment, and he was often seen on the 
high-road, in charge of the drunkard, struggling 
to get him home before he had spent their united 
earnings in drink. In these deplorable circum- 
stances, he acquired a dexterity and patience which 
were most extraordinary. Before he was twelve 
years old he began to handle the chisel and the 
mallet, and his work in squaring and facing a stone 
soon surpassed that of boys much older than him- 
self. He was observed to have a strong propensity 
to do fancy stone-work. He obtained, as a boy, 
some local celebrity for his carved gate posts, and 
other ornamental objects in stone. So gi'eat was 
his skill and industry, that, by the time he was 



302 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

nineteen years of age, besides- having maintained 
a large family for years, he had saved a smn equal 
to a hundred dollars. 

Then a piece of good fortune happened to him. 
A man came from London to set up in a parish 
church near by a monumental figure, and looked 
about for a skillful mason to assist him. Charles 
Smnmers was mentioned as the best hand in the 
neighborhood, and upon him the choice fell. Thus 
he was introduced to the world of art, for this fig- 
lu-e had been executed by Henry Weekes, a distin- 
guished London sculptor. The hardships of his 
childhood had made a man of him at this early age, 
a thoughtfid and prudent man. Taking with him 
ten of his twenty pounds, he went to London and 
applied for employment in the studio of Henry 
Weekes. This artist employed several men, but he 
had no vacant place except the humble one of stone 
polisher, which required little skill. He accepted 
the place with alacrity and delight, at a salary of 
five dollars a week. 

He was now in his element. The lowliest em- 
ployments of the studio were pleasing to him. He 
loved to polish the marble ; the sight of the numer- 
ous models was a pleasure to him ; even wetting the 
cloths and cleaning the model tools were pleasant 
tasks. His cheerfulness and industry soon made 
him a favorite ; and when his work was done, he 
employed his leisure in gaining skill in carving and 
cutting marble. In this he had such success, that, 



CHARLES SUMMERS. 803 

when in after life lie became himself an artist, he 
would sometimes execute his idea in marble with- 
out modeling it in clay. 

When he had been in this studio about a year, 
his employer was commissioned to execute two co- 
lossal figures in bronze, and the young man was 
obliged to spend much of his time in erecting 
the foundry, and other duties which he felt to be 
foreign to his art. Impatient at this, he resigned 
his place, and visited his home, where he executed 
medallion portraits, first of his own relations, and 
afterwards of public men, such as the Mayor of Bris- 
tol, and the member of Parliament for his county. 
These medallions gave him some reputation, and it 
was a favorite branch with him as long as he lived. 

Returning to London, he had no difficulty in 
gaining employment at good wages in a studio of 
a sculptor. Soon we find him competing for the 
prizes offered by the Royal Academy of London 
to young sculptors ; the chief of which is a gold 
medal given every two years for the best group in 
clay of an historical character. A silver medal is 
also given every year for the best model from life. 

At the exhibition of 1851, when he was twenty- 
four years of age, he was a competitor for both 
these prizes. For the gold medal he executed a 
group which he called Mercy interceding for the 
Vanquished. For the silver medal he offered a 
bust of a living person. He had the singular 
good fortune of winning both, and he received 



304 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

them in public from the hands of the President of 
the Academy, Sir Charles Eastlake. Cheer upon 
cheer greeted the modest student when he rose and 
went forward for the purpose. He was a young 
man of great self-control. Instead of joining in 
the usual festivities of his fellow-students after the 
award, he walked quietly to his lodgings, where his 
father and brother were anxiously waiting to hear 
the result of the competition. He threw himself 
into a chair without a word, and they began to con- 
sole him for the supposed disappointment. In a 
few minutes they sat down to supper ; whereupon, 
with a knowing smile, he took his medals out of 
his pocket, and laid one of them on each side of his 
plate. 

From this time he had no difficulties except 
those inherent in the nature of his work, and in his 
own constitution. His early struggle with life had 
made him too intense. He had scarcely known 
what play was, and he did not know how to recre- 
ate himself. He had little taste for reading or so- 
ciety. He loved art alone. The consequence was 
that he worked with an intensity and continuity 
that no human constitution could long endure. 
Soon after winning his two medals his health was 
so completely prostrated that he made a voyage to 
Australia to visit a brother who had settled there. 
The voyage restored him, and he soon resumed the 
practice of his art at Melbourne. The people were 
just building their Houses of Parliament, and he 



CHARLES SUMMERS. 305 

was employed to execute the artistic work of the 
interior. He lived many years in Australia, and 
filled the colony with his works in marble and 
bronze. 

In due time he made the tour of Europe, and 
lingered nine years in Home, where he labored with 
suicidal assiduity. He did far more manual labor 
himself than is usual with artists of his standing, 
and yet, during his residence in Rome he had 
twenty men in his service. It was in Rome, in 
1876, that he received from Melbourne the com- 
mission to execute in marble the four colossal stat- 
ues mentioned above. These works he completed 
in something less than eighteen months, besides do- 
ing several other minor works previously ordered. 

It was too much, and Nature resented the affront. 
After he had packed the statues, and sent them on 
their way to the other side of the globe, he set out 
for Melbourne himself, intending to take England 
by the way for medical advice. At Paris he vis- 
ited the Exhibition, and the next day, at his hotel, 
he fell senseless to the floor. In three weeks he 
was dead, at the age of fifty-one years, in the very 
midst of his career. 

" For him," writes one of his friends, " life con- 
sisted of but one thing — art. For that he lived ; 
and, almost in the midst of it, died. He could 
not have conceived existence without it. Always 
and under every circumstance, he was thinking 
of his work, and gathering from whatever sur- 



306 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY 

rounded him such information as he thought would 
prove of service. In omnibuses, in railway car- 
riages, and elsewhere, he found opportunities of 
study, and could always reproduce a likeness from 
memory of the individuals so observed." 

I do not copy these words as commendation, but 
as warning. Like so many other gifted men of this 
age, he lived too fast and attempted too much. He 
died when his greatest and best life would nat- 
urally have been just beginning. He died at the 
beginning of the period when the capacity for high 
enjoyment of life is naturally the greatest. He 
died when he could have ceased to be a manufac- 
turer and become an artist. 



WILLIAM B. ASTOE. 

HOUSE-OWNER. 



In estimating the character and merits of such a 
man as the late Mr. Astor, we are apt to leave out 
of view the enormous harm he might have done if 
he had chosen to do it. 

The rich fool who tosses a dollar to a waiter for 
some trifling service, debases the waiter, injures 
himself, and wrongs the public. By acting in that 
manner in all the transactions of life, a rich man 
diffuses around him an atmosphere of corruption, 
and raises the scale of expense to a point which 
is oppressive to many, ruinous to some, and incon- 
venient to aU. The late Mr. Astor, with an income 
from invested property of nearly two millions a 
year, could have made life more difficult than it 
was to the whole body of people in New York who 
are able to live in a liberal manner. He refrained 
from doing so. He paid for everything which he 
consumed the market price — no more, no less — 
and he made his purchases with prudence and fore- 
thought. As he lived for many years next door to 
the Astor Library, the frequenters of that noble 



308 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

institution had an opportunity of observing that 
he laid in his year's supply of coal in the month 
of June, when coal is cheapest. 

There was nothing which he so much abhorred 
as waste. It was both an instinct and a principle 
with him to avoid waste. He did not have the gas 
turned down low in a temporarily vacated room 
because he would save two cents by doing so, but 
because he justly regarded waste as wicked. His 
example in this particular, in a city so given to 
careless and ostentatious profusion as New York, 
was most useful. We needed such an example. 
Nor did he appear to carry this principle to an ex- 
treme. He was very far from being miserly, though 
keenly intent upon accumulation. 

In the life of the Old World there is nothing so 
shocking to a republicanized mind as tlie awful 
contrast between the abodes of the poor and the 
establishments of the rich. A magnificent park of 
a thousand acres of the richest land set apart and 
walled in for the exclusive use of one family, while 
all about it are the squalid hovels of the peasants 
to whom the use of a single acre to a family would 
be ease and comfort, is the most painful and shame- 
ful spectacle upon which the sun looks down this 
day. Nothing can make it right. It is monstrous. 
It curses equally the few who ride in the park and 
the many who look over its walls ; for the great 
lord who can submit to be the agent of such injus- 
tice is as much its victim as the degraded laborer 



WILLIAM B. ASTOR. 309 

who drowns the sense of his misery in pot-house 
beer. The mere fact that the lord can look upon 
such a scene and not stir to mend it, is proof posi- 
tive of a profound vulgarity. 

Nor is it lords alone who thus waste the hard 
earned wealth of the toiling sons of men. I read 
some time ago of a wedding in Paris. A thriving 
banker there, who is styled the Baron Alphonse de 
Rothschild, having a daughter of seventeen to 
marry, appears to have set seriously to work to find 
out how much money a wedding could be made to 
cost. In pursuing this inquiry, he caused the wed- 
ding festivals of Louis XIV's court, once so fa- 
mous, to seem poverty-stricken and threadbare. 
He began by a burst of ostentatious charity. He 
subscribed money for the relief of the victims of 
recent inundations, and dowered a number of por- 
tionless girls ; expending in these ways a quarter 
of a million francs. He gave his daughter a por- 
tion of five millions of francs. One of her painted 
fans cost five thousand francs. He provided such 
enormous quantities of clothing for her little body, 
that his house, if it had not been exceedingly large, 
would not have conveniently held them. For the 
conveyance of the wedding party from the house to 
the synagogue, he caused twenty-five magnificent 
carriages to be made, such as monarchs use when 
they are going to be crowned, and these vehicles 
were drawn by horses imported from England for 
the purpose. The bridal veil was composed of inef« 



310 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

fable lace, made from an original design expressly 
for this bride. 

And then what doings in the synagogue ! A 
choir of one hundred and ten trained voices, led 
by the best conductor in Europe — the first tenor 
of this generation engaged, who sang the prayer 
from " Moses in Egypt" — a crowd of rabbis, and 
assistant-rabbis, with the grand rabbi of Paris at 
their head. To complete the histrionic perform- 
ance, eight young gii'ls, each bearing a beautiful 
gold-embroidered bag, and attended by a young 
gentleman, " took up a collection " for the poor, 
which yielded seven thousand francs. 

Mr. Astor could, if he had chosen, have thrown 
his millions about in this style. He was one of a 
score or two of men in North America who could 
have maintained establishments in town and coun- 
try on the dastardly scale so common among rich 
people in Europe. He, too, could have had his 
park, his half a dozen mansions, his thirty carriages, 
his hundred horses and his yacht as big as a man- 
of-war. That he was above such atrocious vul- 
garity as this, was much to his credit and more to 
our advantage. What he could have done safely, 
other men would have attempted to whom the at- 
tempt would have been destruction. Some dis- 
credit also would have been cast upon those who 
live in moderate and modest ways. 

Every quarter day Mr. Astor had nearly half a 
million dollars to invest in the industries of the 



WILLIAM B. ASTOR. 311 

country. To invest his surplus income in the best 
and safest manner was the study of his life. His 
business was to take care of and increase his es- 
tate ; and that being his business, he was right in 
giving the necessary attention to it. " William 
will never make money," his father used to say; 
" but he will take good care of what he has." And 
so it proved. The consequence was, that all his 
life he invested money in the way that was at once 
best for himseK and best for the country. No use- 
less or premature scheme had had any encourage- 
ment from him. He invariably, and by a certainty 
of judgment that resembled an instinct, "put his 
money where it would do most good." Political 
economists demonstrate that an investment which 
is the best for the investor must of necessity be the 
best for the public. Here, again, we were lucky. 
When we wanted houses more than we wanted 
coal, he built houses for us ; and when we wanted 
coal more than we wanted houses, he set his money 
to digging coal ; charging nothing for his trouble 
but the mere cost of his subsistence. 

One fault he had as a public servant — for we 
may fairly regard in that light a man who wields 
so large a portion of our common estate. He was 
one of the most timid of men. He was even tim- 
orous. His timidity was constitutional and phys- 
ical. He would take a great deal of trouble to 
avoid crossing a temporary bridge or scaffolding, 
though assured by an engineer that it was strong 



312 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

enough to bear ten elephants. Nor can it be said 
that he was morally brave. Year after year he saw 
a gang of thieves in the City Hall stealing his rev- 
enues under the name of taxes and assessments, but 
he never led an assault upon them nor gave the aid 
he ought to those who did. Unless he is grossly 
belied, he preferred to compromise than fight, and 
did not always disdain to court the ruffians who 
plundered him. 

This was a grave fault. He who had the most 
immediate and the most obvious interest in expos- 
ing and resisting the scoundrels, ought to have 
taken the lead in putting them down. This he 
could not do. Nature had denied him the qualities 
required for such a contest. He had his enormous 
estate, and he had mind enough to take care of it 
in ordinary ways ; but he had nothing more. We 
must therefore praise him less for the good he did 
in his life, than for the evil which he refrained from 
doing. 



PETEK COOPER. 



On an April morning in 1883 I was seated at 
breakfast in a room which commanded a view of 
the tall flag-staff in Gramercy Park in the city of 
New York. I noticed some men unfolding the flag 
and raising it on the mast. The flag stopped mid- 
way and dropped motionless in the stiU spring 
morning. The newspapers which were scattered 
about the room made no mention of the death of 
any person of note and yet this sign of mourning 
needed no explanation. For half a life-time Peter 
Cooper had lived in a great, square, handsome 
house just round the corner, and the condition of 
the aged philanthropist had been reported about 
the neighborhood from hour to hour during the 
previous days ; so that almost every one who saw 
the flag uttered words similar to those which I 
heard at the moment : — 

" He is gone, then ! The good old man is gone. 
We shall never see his snowy locks again, nor his 
placid countenance, nor his old horse and gig jog- 
ging by. Peter Cooper is dead ! " 

He had breathed his last about three o'clock that 



314 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

morning, after the newspapers had gone to press ; 
but the tidings spread with strange rapidity. When 
I went out of the house two hours later, the whole 
city seemed hung with flags at half-mast ; for there 
is probably no city in the world which has so much 
patriotic bunting at command as New York. Pas- 
sengers going north and west observed the same to- 
kens of regard all along the lines of railroad. By 
mid-day the great State of New York, from the Nar- 
rows to the lakes, and from the lakes to the Penn- 
sylvania line, exhibited everywhere the same mark 
of respect for the character of the departed. A 
tribute so sincere, so spontaneous and so universal, 
has seldom been paid to a private individual. 

It was richly deserved. Peter Cooper was a 
man quite out of the common order even of good 
men. His munificent gift to the public, so strik- 
ingly and widely useful, has somewhat veiled from 
public view his eminent executivs qualities, which 
were only less exceptional than his moral. 

I once had the pleasure of hearing the story of 
his life related with some minuteness by a member 
of his own family, now honorably conspicuous in 
public life, and I will briefly repeat it here. More 
than ninety years ago, when John Jacob Astor 
kept a fur store in Water Street, and used to go 
round himself buying his furs of the Hudson River 
boatmen and the western Indians, he had a neigh- 
bor who bought beaver skins of him, and made 
them into hats in a little shop near by, in the 



PETER COOPER. 315 

same street. This hat-maker, despite his peaceful 
occupation, was called by his friends Captain 
Cooper, for he had been a good soldier of the 
Revolution, and had retired, after honorable ser- 
vice to the very end of the war, with a captain's 
rank. Captain Cooper was a better soldier than 
man of business. Indeed, New York was then a 
town of but twenty-seven thousand inhabitants, and 
the field for business was restricted. He was an 
amiable, not very energetic man ; but he had had 
the good fortune to marry a woman who supplied 
all his deficiencies. The daughter of one of the 
colonial mayors of New York, she was born on the 
very spot which is now the site of St. Paul's Church 
at the corner of Broadway and Fulton Street, and 
her memory ran back to the time when the stock- 
ade was still standing which had been erected in 
the early day as a defense against the Indians. 

There is a vivid tradition in the surviving fam- 
ily of Peter Cooper of the admirable traits of his 
mother. She was educated among the Moravians 
in Pennsylvania, who have had particular success 
in forming and developing the female character. 
She was a woman in whom were blended the diverse 
qxxalities of her eminent son, energy and tender- 
ness, mental force and moral elevation. She was 
the mother of two daughters and seven sons, her 
fifth child being Peter, who was born in 1791. 

To the end of his life, Peter Cooper had a clear 
recollection of many interesting events which oc- 



316 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

curred before the beginning of the present cen- 
tury. 

" I remember," he used to say, " that I was 
about nine years old at the time when Washington 
was buried. That is, he was buried at Mount 
Vernon ; but we had a funeral service in old St. 
Paul's. I stood in front of the church, and I recall 
the event well, on account of his old white horse 
and its trappings." 

A poor hatter, with a family of nine children, 
must needs turn his children to account, and the 
consequence was that Peter Cooper enjoyed an 
education which gave him at least great manual 
dexterity. He learned how to use both his hands 
and a portion of his brain. He learned how to do 
things. His earliest recollection was his working 
for his father in pulling, picking, and cleaning the 
wool used in making hat-bodies, and he was kept 
at this work during his whole boyhood, except that 
one year he went to school half of every day, learn- 
ing a little arithmetic, as well as reading and writ- 
ing. By the time he was fifteen years old he had 
learned to make a good beaver hat throughout, and 
a good beaver hat of that period was an elaborate 
and imposing structure. 

Then his father abandoned his hat shop and re- 
moved to Peeksldll on the Hudson, where he set 
up a brewery, and where Peter learned the whole 
art and mystery of maldng beer. He was quick 
to learn every kind of work, and even as a boj? he 



PETER COOPER. 317 

was apt to suggest improvements in tools and meth- 
ods. At the age of seventeen, he was still work- 
ing in the brewery, a poor man's son, and engaged 
in an employment which for many and good rea- 
sons he disliked. Brewing beer is a repulsive oc- 
cupation. 

Then, with his father's consent, he came alone to 
New York, intending to aj)prentice himself to any 
trade that should take his fancy. He visited shop 
after shop, and at last applied for employment at 
a carriage factory near the corner of Broadway and 
Chambers Street. He remembered, to his nine- 
tieth year, the substance of the conversation which 
passed between him and one of the partners in this 
business. 

" Have you room for an apprentice ? " asked 
Peter. 

" Do you know anything about the business ? " 
was the rejoinder. 

The lad was obliged to answer that he did not. 

" Have you been brought up to work ?" 

He replied by giving a brief history of his pre- 
vious life. 

"Is your father willing that you should learn 
this trade ? " 

" He has given me my choice of trades." 

" If I take you, will you stay with me and work 
out your time ? " 

He gave his word that he would, and a bargain 
was made — twenty-five dollars a year, and his 



318 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

board. He kept his promise and served out his 
time. To use his own language : — 

" In my seventeenth year I entered as apprentice 
to the coach-making business, in which I remained 
four years, till I became ' of age.' I made for my 
employer a machine for mortising the hubs of car- 
riages, which proved very profitable to him, and 
was, perhaps, the first of its kind used in this coun- 
try. When I was twenty-one years old my em- 
ployer offered to build me a shop and set me up 
in business, but as I always had a horror of being 
burdened with debt, and having no capital of my 
own, I declined his kind offer. He himself be- 
came a bankrupt. I have made it a rule to pay 
everything as I go. If, in the course of business, 
anything is due from me to any one, and the money 
is not called for, I make it my business on the last 
Saturday before Christmas to take it to his busi- 
ness place." 

It was during this period of his life, from seven- 
teen to twenty-one, that he felt most painfully the 
defects of his education. He had acquired manual 
skill, but he felt acutely that this quality alone was 
rather that of a beaver than of a man. He had an 
inquisitive, energetic understanding, which could 
not be content without knowledge far beyond that 
of the most advanced beaver. Hungering for such 
knowledge, he bought some books: but in those 
days there were few books of an elementary kind 
adapted to the needs of a lonely, uninstructed boy. 



PETER COOPER. 319 

His books puzzled more than they enlightened him ; 
and so, when his work was done, he looked about 
the little bustling city to see if there was not some 
kind of evening school in which he could get 
the kind of help he needed. There was nothing of 
the kind, either in New York or in any city then. 
Nor were there free schools of any kind. He found 
a teacher, however, who, for a small compensation, 
gave him instruction in the evening in arithmetic 
and other branches. It was at this time that he 
formed the resolution which he carried out forty-five 
years later. He said to himself : — 

" If ever I prosper in business so as to acquire 
more property than I need, I wiU try to found an 
institution in the city of New York, wherein appren- 
tice boys and young mechanics shall have a chance 
to get knowledge in the evening." 

This purpose was not the dream of a sentimental 
youth. It was a clear and positive intention, which 
he kept steadily in view through all vicissitudes 
until he was able to enter upon its accomplishment. 

He was twenty-one years of age when the war of 
1812 began, which closed for the time every car- 
riage manufactory in the country. He was there- 
fore fortunate in not having accepted the proj)osi- 
tion of his employer. During the first months of 
the war business was dead ; but as the supply of 
foreign merchandise gave out an impulse was given 
to home manufacture, especially of the fabrics used 
in clothing. There was a sudden demand for cloth- 



320 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

making machinery of all kinds, and now Peter 
Cooper put to good use his inventive faculty. He 
contrived a machine for cutting away the nap on 
the surface of cloth, which answered so well that he 
soon had a bustling shop for making the machines, 
which he sold faster than he could produce. He 
found himself all at once in an excellent business, 
and in December, 1813, he married Miss Sarah 
Bedel of Hempstead, Long Island ; he being then 
twenty-two and she twenty-one. 

There never was a happier marriage than this. 
To old age, he never sat near her without holding 
her hand in his. He never spoke to her nor of 
her without some tender epithet. He attributed 
the great happiness of his life and most of his suc- 
cess to her admirable qualities. He used to say that 
she was " the day-star, the solace, and the inspira- 
tion " of his life. She seconded every good im- 
pulse of his benevolence, and made the fulfillment 
of his great scheme possible by her wise and reso- 
lute economy. They began their married life on a 
scale of extreme frugality, both laboring together 
for the common good of the family.. 

" In early life," he used to say, " when I was 
first married, I found it necessary to rock the cra- 
dle, while my wife prepared our frugal meals. This 
was not always convenient in my busy life, and I 
conceived the idea of making a cradle that would 
be made to rock by mechanism. I did so, and 
enlarging upon my first idea, I arranged the mech- 



PETER COOPER. 321 

anism for keej)ing off tlie flies, and playing a mu- 
sic-box for the amusement of the baby ! This 
cradle was bought of me afterwards by a delighted 
peddler, who gave me his ' whole stock in trade ' 
for the exchange and the privilege of selling the 
patent in the State of Connecticut." 

This device in various forms and modifications 
is still familiar in our households. They had six 
children, of whom two survive, Mr. Edward Coo- 
per, recently mayor of New York, and Sarah, wife 
of Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, member of Congress 
from the city of New York. For nearly sixty- 
five years this couple lived together in happy mar- 
riage. 

In 1815 the peace with Great Britain, which 
gave such ecstasies of joy to the whole country, ru- 
ined Peter Cooper's business ; as it was no longer 
possible to make cloth in the United States with 
profit. With three trades at his finger ends, he 
now tried a fourth, cabinet-making, in which he 
did not succeed. He moved out of town, and 
bought the stock of a grocer, whose store stood on 
the very site of the present Cooper Institute, at 
that time surrounded by fields and vacant lots. 
But even then he thought that, by the time he was 
ready to begin his evening school, that angle of 
land would probably be an excellent central spot 
on which to build it. 

He did very well with his grocery store ; but it 
never would have enabled him to endow his Insti- 

21 



322 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

tute. One day when lie had kept his grocery about 
a year, and used his new cradle at intervals in the 
rooms above, an old friend of his accosted him, as 
he stood at the door of the grocery. 

" I have been building," said his visitor, " a glue 
factory for my son ; but I don't think that either 
he or I can make it pay. But you are the very 
man to do it," 

" I '11 go and see it," said Peter Cooper. 

He got into his friend's wagon and they drove 
to the spot, which was near the corner of Madison 
Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street, almost on the 
very spot now occupied by an edifice of much note 
called "The Little Church Round the Corner." 
He liked the look of the new factory, and he saw 
no reason why the people of New York should send 
all the way to Eussia for good glue. His friend 
asked two thousand dollars for the establishment 
as it stood, and Peter Cooper chanced to have that 
sum of money, and no more. He bought the fac- 
tory on the spot, sold his grocery soon, and plunged 
into the manufacture of glue, of which he knew 
nothing except that Russian glue was very good 
and American very bad. 

Now he studied the composition of glue, and 
gradually learned the secret of making the best 
possible article which brought the highest price in 
the market. He worked for twenty years without 
a book-keeper, clerk, salesman, or agent. He rose 
with the dawn. When his men came at seven 



• PETER COOPER. 323 

o'clock to work, they found the factory fires lighted, 
and it was the master who had lighted them. He 
watched closely and always the boiling of his glue, 
and at midday, when the critical operation was 
over, he drove into the city and went the round of 
his customers, selling them glue and isinglass, and 
passed the evening in posting his books and read- 
ing to his family. 

He developed the glue business until it yielded 
him a profit of thirty thousand dollars a year. He 
soon began to feel himself a capitalist, and to 
count the years until he would be able to begin the 
erection of the institution he had in his mind. But 
men who are known to have capital are continually 
solicited to embark in enterprises, and he was un- 
der a strong temptation to yield to such solicita- 
tions, for the scheme which he had projected would 
involve a larger expenditure than could be ordi- 
narily made from one business in one lifetime. He 
used to tell the story of his getting into the busi- 
ness of making iron, which was finally a source of 
great profit to him. 

" In 1828," he would say, " I bought three 
thousand acres of land within the city limits of 
Baltimore for $105,000. When I first purchased 
the property it was in the midst of a great excite- 
ment created by a promise of the rapid completion 
of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which had 
been commenced by a subscription of five dollars 
per share. In the course of the first year's opera. 



324 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTkY. 

tions they had spent more than the five dollars per 
share. But the road had to make so many short 
turns in going around points of rocks that they 
found they could not complete the road without a 
much larger sum than they had supposed would be 
necessary ; while the many short turns in the road 
seemed to render it entirely useless for locomotive 
purposes. The principal stockholders had become 
so discouraged that they said they would not pay 
any more, and would lose all they had already paid 
in. After conversing with them, I told them that 
if they would hold on a little while I would put a 
small locomotive on the road, which I thought 
would demonstrate the practicability of using steam- 
engines on the road, even with all the short turns 
in it. I got up a small engine for that purpose, 
and put it upon the road, and invited the stock- 
holders to witness the experiment. After a good 
deal of trouble and difficulty in accomplishing the 
work, the stockholders came, and thirty-six men 
were taken into a car, and, with six men on the lo- 
comotive, which carried its own fuel and water, and 
having to go up hill eighteen feet to a mile, and 
turn all the short turns around the points of rocks, 
we succeeded in making the thirteen miles, on the 
first passage out, in one hour and twelve minutes, 
and we returned from EUicott's Mills to Baltimore 
in fifty-seven minutes. This locomotive was built 
to demonstrate that cars could be drawn around 
short curves, beyond anything believed at that time 



PETER COOPER. 325 

to be possible. The success of this locomotive also 
answered the question of the possibility of building 
railroads in a country scarce of capital, and with 
immense stretches of very rough country to pass, in 
order to connect commercial centres, without the 
deep cuts, the tunneling and leveling which short 
curves might avoid. My contrivance saved this 
road from bankruptcy." 

He stiU had his tract of Baltimore land upon his 
hands, which the check to the prosperity of the city 
rendered for the time almost valueless ; so he de- 
termined to build ironworks upon it, and a rolling- 
mill. In his zeal to acquire knowledge at first 
hand, he had a narrow escape from destruction in 
Baltimore. 

" In my efforts to make iron," he said, " I had to 
begin by burning the wood growing upon the spot 
into charcoal, and in order to do that, I erected 
large kilns, twenty-five feet in diameter, twelve feet 
high, circular in form, hooped around with iron at 
the top, arched over so as to make a tight place in 
which to put the wood, with single bricks left out in 
different places in order to smother the fire out 
when the wood was sufficiently burned. After hav- 
ing burned the coal in one of these kilns perfectly, 
and believing the fire entirely smothered out, we 
attempted to take the coal out of the kiln ; but 
when we had got it about half-way out, the coal 
itself took fire, and the men, after carrying water 
some time to extinguish it, gave up in despair. 



326 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

I then went myself to the door of the kiln to see 
if anything more could be done, and just as I 
entered the door the gas itself took fire and en- 
veloped me in a sheet of flame. I had to run some 
ten feet to get out, and in doing so my eyebrows and 
whiskers were burned, and my fur hat was scorched 
down to the body of the fur. How I escaped I know 
not. I seemed to be literally blown out by the 
explosion, and I narrowly escaped with my life." 

The ironworks were finally removed to Trenton, 
New Jersey, where to this day, under the vigorous 
management of Mr. Hewitt and his partners, they 
are very successful. 

During these active years Peter Cooper never 
for a moment lost sight of the great object of his 
life. We have a new proof of this, if proof were 
needed, in the Autobiography recently published 
of the eloquent Orville Dewe}'^, j)astor of the Uni- 
tarian Church of the Messiah, which Peter Cooper 
attended for many years. 

" There were two men," says Dr. Dewey, " who 
came to our church whose coming seemed to be by 
chance, but was of great interest to pie, for I val- 
ued them greatly. Thej^ were Peter Cooper and 
Joseph Curtis.i Neither of them then belonged 
to any religious society, or regularly attended 
any church. They happened to be walking down 
Broadway one Sunday evening, as the congrega- 

1 A noted philanthropist of that day, devoted to the im- 
provement of the public schools of the city. 



PETER COOPER. 327 

tion were entering Stuyvesant Hall, where we then 
temporarily worshiped, and they said : — 

" ' Let us go in here and see what this is.' 

" When they came out, as they both told me, 
they said to one another : — 

" ' This is the place for us 1 ' 

" And they immediately connected themselves 
with the congregation, to be among its most valued 
members. Peter Cooper was even then meditating 
that plan of a grand educational institute which 
he afterwards carried out. He was engaged in a 
large and successful business, and his one idea — 
which he often discussed with me — was to obtain 
the means of building that institute. A man of 
the gentlest nature and the simplest habits; yet 
his religious nature was his most remarkable qual- 
ity. It seemed to breathe through bis life as fresh 
and tender as if it were in some holy retreat, in- 
stead of a life of business." 

Indeed there are several aged New Yorkers who 
can well remember hearing Mr. Cooper speak of 
his project at that period. 

After forty years of successful business life, he 
found, u.pon estimating his resources, that he pos- 
sessed about seven hundred thousand dollars over 
and above the capital invested in his glue and iron 
works. Already he had become the owner of por- 
tions of the ground he had selected so long ago for 
the site of his school. The first lot he bought, as 
Mr. Hewitt informs me, about thirty years before 



328 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

he began to build, and from that time onward he 
continued to buy pieces of the ground as often as 
they were for sale, if he could spare the money ; 
until in 1854 the whole block was his own. 

At first his intention was merely to establish and 
endow just such an evening school as he had felt 
the need of when he was an apprentice boy in New 
York. But long before he was ready to begin, 
there were free evening schools as well as day 
schools in every ward of the city, and he therefore 
resolved to found something, he knew not what, 
which should impart to apprentices and young me- 
chanics a knowledge of the arts and sciences under- 
lying the ordinary trades, such as drawing, chem- 
istry, mechanics, and various branches of natural 
philosophy. 

While he was revolving this scheme in his mind 
he happened to meet in the street a highly accom- 
plished physician who had just returned from a 
tour in Europe, and who began at once to describe 
in glowing words the Polytechnic School of Paris, 
wherein mechanics and engineers receive the in- 
struction which their professions require. The doc- 
tor said that young men came from all parts of 
France and lived on dry bread, just to attend the 
Polytechnic. 

He was no longer in doubt ; he entered at once 
upon the realization of his project. Beginning to 
build in 1854, he erected a massive structure of 
brick, stone, and iron, six stories in height, and fire- 



PETER COOPER. 329 

proof in every part, at a cost of seven hundred 
thousand dollars, the savings of his lifetime up to 
that period. Five years after, he delivered the 
complete structure, with the hearty consent of his 
wife, his children, and his son-in-law, into the hands 
of trustees, thus placing it beyond his own control 
forever. Two thousand pupils at once applied for 
admission. From that day to this the Institute 
has continued from year to year to enlarge its 
scope and improve its methods. Mr. Cooper added 
something every year to its resources, until his en- 
tire gift to the public amounted to about two mil- 
lions of dollars. 

Peter Cooper lived to the great age of ninety- 
two. No face in New York was more familiar to 
the people, and surely none was so welcome to them 
as the benign, placid, beaming countenance of " Old 
Peter Cooper." The roughest cartman, the most 
reckless hack driver would draw up his horses and 
wait without a word of impatience, if it was Peter 
Cooper's quaint old gig that blocked the way. He 
was one of the most uniformly happy persons I 
have ever met, and he retained his cheerfulness to 
the very end. Being asked one day in his nine- 
tieth year, how he had preserved so well his bodily 
and mental vigor, he replied : — 

" I always find something to keep me busy ; and 
to be doing something for the good of man, or to 
keep the wheels in motion, is the best medicine one 
can take. I run up and down stairs here almost as 



830 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

easily as I did years ago, when I never expected 
that my term would run into the nineties. I have 
occasional twinges from the nervous shock and 
physical injury sustained from an explosion that oc- 
curred while I was conducting some experiments 
with nitrogen gas years ago. In other respects my 
days pass as painlessly as they did when I was a 
boy carrying a grocer's basket about the streets. It 
is very curious, but somehow, though I have none 
of the pains and troubles that old men talk about, 
I have not the same luxury of life — the same rel- 
ish in the mere act of living — that I had then. 
Age is like babyhood come back again in a cer- 
tain way. Even the memories of baby-life come 
back — the tricks, the pranks, the boyish dreams ; 
and things that I did not remember at forty or fifty 
years old I recollect vividly now. But a boy of 
ninety and a boy of nine are very different things, 
none the less. I never felt better in my life ex- 
cept for twinges occasioned by my nitrogen expe- 
riment. But still I hear a voice calling to me, as 
my mother often did, when I was a boy 'Peter, 
Peter, it is about bed-time,' and I have an old man's 
presentiment that I shall be taken soon." 

He loved the Institute he had founded to the 
last hour of his consciousness. A few weeks be- 
fore his death he said to Reverend Robert Coll- 
yer: — 

" I would be glad to have four more years of 
life given me, for I am anxious to make some addi- 



PETER COOPER. 331 

tional improvements in Cooper Union, and then 
part of my life-work would be complete. If I 
could only live four years longer I would die con- 
tent." 

Dr. CoUyer adds this pleasing anecdote : — 
" I remember a talk I had with him not long be- 
fore his death, in which he said that a Presbyte- 
rian minister of great reputation and ability, but 
who has since died, had called upon him one day 
and among other things discussed the future life. 
They were old and tried friends, the minister and 
Mr. Cooper, and when the clergyman began to 
question Mr. Cooper's belief, he said : ' I some- 
times think that if one has too good a time here 
below, there is less reason for him to go to heaven. 
I have had a very good time, but I know poor 
creatures whose lives have been spent in a constant 
struggle for existence. They should have some 
reward hereafter. They have worked here ; they 
should be rewarded after death. The only doubts 
that I have about the future are whether I have 
not had too good a time on earth.' " 

He died in April, 1883, from a severe cold which 
he had not the strength to throw off. His end 
was as peaceful and painless as his life had been 
innocent and beneficial. 



PARIS-DUVEENEY. 

FEENCH FINAIJCIEE. 



Some one has remarked that the old French 
monarchy was a despotism tempered by epigrams. 
I take the liberty of adding that if the despotism 
of the later French kings had not been frequently 
tempered by something more effectual than epi- 
grams, it would not have lasted as long as it did. 

What tempered and saved it was, that, occasion- 
ally, by hook or by crook, men of sterling sense and 
ability rose from the ordinary walks of life to posi- 
tions of influence and power, which enabled them 
to counteract the folly of the ruling class. 

About the year 1691 there was an inn at the 
foot of the Alps, near the border line that divided 
France from Switzerland, bearing, the sign, St. 
Francis of the Mountain. There was no village 
near. The inn stood alone among the mountains, 
being supported in part by travelers going from 
France to Geneva, and in part by the sale of wine 
to the farmers who lived in the neighborhood. The 
landlord, named Paris, was a man of intelligence 
and ability, who, besides keeping his inn, cultivated 



PARIS-DUVERNEY. 333 

a farm ; assisted in both by energetic, capable sons, 
of whom he had four : Antoine, aged twenty-three ; 
Claude, twenty-one ; Joseph, seven ; and Jean, an 
infant. It was a strong, able family, who loved 
and confided in one another, having no thought but 
to live and die near the spot upon which they were 
born, and in about the same sphere of life. 

But such was not their destiny. An intrigue of 
the French ministry drew these four sons from ob- 
scurity, and led them to the high places of the 
world. Pontchartrain, whose name is still borne 
by a lake in Louisiana, was then minister of finance 
to Louis XIV. To facilitate the movements of the 
army in the war then going on between France and 
Savoy, he proposed to the king the formation of a 
company which should contract to supply the army 
with provisions ; and, the king accepting his sugges- 
tion, the company was formed, and began opera- 
tions. But the secretary of war took this movement 
of his colleague in high dudgeon, as the supply of 
the army, he thought, belonged to the war depart- 
ment. To frustrate and disgrace the new company 
of contractors, he ordered the army destined to op- 
erate in Italy to take the field on the first of May, 
several weeks before it was possible for the contract- 
ors by the ordinary methods to collect and move 
the requisite supplies. The company exj)lained the 
impossibility of their feeding the army so early in 
the season ; but the minister of war, not ill-pleased 
to see his rival embarrassed, held to his purpose, 



334 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

and informed the contractors' agent that he must 
have thirty thousand sacks of flour at a certain post 
by a certain day, or his head should answer it. 

The agent, alarmed, and at his wits' end, con- 
sulted the innkeeper of the Alps, whom he knew to 
be an energetic spirit, and perfectly well acquainted 
with the men, the animals, the resources, and the 
roads of the region in which he lived, and through 
which the provisions would have to pass. The 
elder sons of the landlord were in the field at the 
time at work, and he told the agent he must 
wait a few hours till he could talk the matter over 
with them. At the close of the day there was a 
family consultation, and the result was that they 
undertook the task. Antoine, the eldest son, went 
to Lyons, the nearest large city, and induced the 
magistrates to lend the king the grain preserved in 
the public depositories against famine, engaging to 
replace it as soon as the navigation opened in the 
spring. The magistrates, full of zeal for the king's 
service, yielded willingly ; and meanwhile, Claude, 
the second of the brothers, bought a thousand 
mules ; and, in a very few days, in spite of the 
rigor of the season, long lines of mules, each laden 
with a sack of flour, were winding their way 
through the defiles of the Alps, guided by peas- 
ants whom the father of these boys had selected. 

This operation being insufficient, hundreds of 
laborers were set to work breaking the ice in the 
night, and in constructing barges, so as to be in 



PARIS-DUVERNEY. 335 

readiness the moment navigation was practica- 
ble. 

Early in the spring two himdred barge loads 
were set floating down toward the seat of war ; and 
by the time the general in command was ready to 
take the field, there was an abundance of tents, 
provisions, ammunition, and artillery within easy 
reach. 

The innkeeper and his sons were liberally recom- 
pensed ; and their talents thus being made known 
to the company of contractors, they were employed 
again a year or two after in collecting the means 
required in a siege, and in forwarding provisions 
to a province threatened with famine. These large 
operations gave the brothers a certain distaste for 
their country life, and they removed to Paris in 
quest of a more stirring and brilliant career than 
an Alpine inn with farm adjacent could afford. 
One of them enlisted at first in the king's guards, 
and the rest obtained clerkships in the office of the 
company of contractors. By the time they were all 
grown to manhood, the eldest, a man over forty, 
and the youngest, eighteen or twenty, they had 
themselves become army contractors and capital- 
ists, noted in army circles for the tact, the fidelity, 
and the indomitable energy with which they car- 
ried on their business. 

The reader is aware that during the last years of 
the reign of Louis XIV., France suffered a series 
of most disastrous defeats from the allied armies, 



336 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

commanded by the great English general, the Duke 
of Marlborough. It was these four able brothers 
who supplied the French army with provisions dur- 
ing that terrible time ; and I do not hesitate to say, 
that, on two or three critical occasions, it was their 
energy and intelligence that saved the independ- 
ence of their country. Often the king's govern- 
ment could not give them a single louis-d'or in 
money when a famishing army was to be supplied. 
On several occasions they spent their whole capital 
in the work and risked their credit. There was one 
period of five months, as they used afterwards to 
say, when they never once went to bed sure of being 
able to feed the army the next day. During those 
years of trial they were sustained in a great de- 
gree by the confidence which they inspired in their 
honesty, as well as in their ability. The great 
French banker and capitalist then was Samuel Ber- 
nard. On more than one occasion Bernard saved 
them by lending them, on their personal security, 
immense sums ; in one crisis as much as three mil- 
lion francs. 

We can judge of the extent of their opera- 
tions, when we learn that, during the last two 
years of the war, they had to supply a hundred 
and eighty thousand men in the field, and twenty 
thousand men in garrison, while receiving from the 
government little besides depreciated paper. 

Peace came at last; and it came at a moment 
when the whole capital of the four brothers was m 



PARIS-DUVERNEY. 337 

the king's paper, and when the finances were in a 
state of inconceivable confusion. The old king 
died in 1715, leaving as heir to the throne a sickly 
boy five years of age. The royal paper was so 
much depreciated that the king's promise to pay 
one hundred francs sold in the street for twenty- 
five francs. Then came the Scotch inflator, John 
Law, who gave France a brief delirium of paper 
prosperity, ending with the most woful and wide- 
spread collapse ever known. It was these four 
brothers, but especially the third brother, Joseph 
Paris, known in French history as Paris-Duverney, 
who, by labors almost without example, restored 
the finances of the country, funded the debt at a 
reasonable interest, and enabled France to profit 
by the twenty years of peace that lay before her. 

There is nothing in the whole history of finance 
more remarkable than the five years' labors of these 
brothers after the Law-mania of 1719 ; and it is 
hardly possible to overstate the value of their ser- 
vices at a time when the kingdom was governed by 
an idle and dissolute regent, and when there was 
not a nobleman about the court capable of grap- 
pling with the situation. The regent died of his de- 
baucheries in the midst of their work. The Duke 
of Bourbon succeeded him ; he was governed by 
Madame de Prie ; and between them they concocted 
a nice scheme for getting the young king married, 
who had then reached the mature age of fifteen. 
The idea was to rule the king through a queen of 



338 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY, 

their own choosing, and who would be grateful to 
them for her elevation. 

But it turned out quite otherwise. The king, in- 
deed, was married, and he was very fond of his wife, 
and she tried to carry out the desires of those who 
had made her queen of France. But there was 
an obstacle in the way ; and that obstacle was the 
king's unbounded confidence in his tutor, the Abbd 
de Fleury, a serene and extremely agreeable old 
gentleman past seventy. A struggle arose between 
the old tutor and Madame de Prie for the posses- 
sion of the young king. The tutor won the victory. 
The Duke of Bourbon wa^ exiled to his country- 
seat, and Madame de Prie was sent packing. 
Paris-Duverney and his first clerk were put into 
the Bastille, where they were detained for two 
years in unusually rigorous imprisonment, and his 
three brothers were exiled to their native province. 

Another intrigue of court set them free again, 
and the four brothers were once more in Paris, 
where they continued their career as bankers, con- 
tractors, and capitalists as long as they lived, each 
of them acquiring and leaving a colossal fortune, 
which their heirs were considerate enough to dis- 
sipate. It was Paris-Duverney who suggested and 
managed the great military school at Paris, which 
still exists. It was he also who helped make the 
fortunes of the most celebrated Kterary men of 
his time, Voltaire and Beaumarchais. He did this 
by admitting them to a share in army contracts, 



PARIS-DUVERNEY. 339 

one of which yielded Voltaire a profit of seven 
hundred thousand francs, which, with good nurs- 
ing, made him at last the richest literary man that 
ever lived. 

Paris-Duverney was as good a man and patriot 
as a man could well be who had to work with and 
under such persons as Louis XV. and Madame de 
Pompadour. By way of showing what difficulties 
men had to overcome who then desired to serve 
their country, I will mention a single incident of 
his later career. 

His favorite work, the Ecole Militaire, of which 
he was the first superintendent, shared the unpop- 
ularity of its early patron, Madame de Pompadour, 
and long he strove in vain to bring it into favor. 
To use the narrative of M. de Lomenie, the biogra- 
pher of Beaumarchais : — 

"He was constantly at court, laboring without 
cessation on behalf of the military school, and solicit- 
ing the king in vain to visit it in state, which would 
have given a sort of prestige. Coldly received by 
the dauphin, the queen, and the princesses, he 
could not, as the friend of Madame de Pompadour, 
obtain from the nonchalance of Louis XV. the visit 
which he so much desired, when the idea struck 
him, in his despair, of having recourse to the young 
harpist, who appeared to be so assiduous in his 
attendance on the princesses, and who directed 
their concert every week. Beamnarchais under- 
stood at once the advantage he might derive from 



840 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

rendering an important service to a clever, rich, old 
financier, wlio had still a number of affairs in hand, 
and who was capable of bringing him both wealth 
and advancement. But how could a musician with- 
out importance hope to obtain from the king what 
had already been refused to solicitations of much 
more influence than his own ? Beaumarchais went 
to work like a man who had a genius for dramatic 
intrigue and a knowledge of the human heart. 

" We have shown that, while he was giving his 
time and attention to the princesses, he never asked 
for anything in return. He thought that if he were 
fortunate enough to persuade them, in the first in- 
stance, to pay a visit to the Ecole Militaire, the 
curiosity of the king perhaps would be excited by 
the narrative of what they had seen, and would 
lead him to do that which he would never have 
been prompted to do by justice. He accordingly 
represented to the princesses not only the equita- 
ble side of the question, but also the immense in- 
terest which he himself had in obtaining this favor 
for a man who might be of great use to him. The 
princesses consented to visit the Ecole Militaire, 
and Beaumarchais was granted the honor of ac- 
companying them. The director received them 
with great splendor ; they did not conceal from 
him the great interest they took in their young 
'protegS., and some days afterward Louis XV., 
urged by his daughters, visited it himself, and 
thus gratified the wishes of old Duverney. 



PARIS-DUVERNEY. 341 

"From this moment tlie financier, grateful for 
Beaumarchais' good services, and delighted to find 
a person who could assist him as an intermediary 
in his intercourse with the court, resolved to make 
the yoimg man's fortune. He began by giving him 
a share in one of his speculations to the amount of 
sixty thousand francs, on which he paid him inter- 
est at the rate of ten per cent. ; after this, he gave 
him an interest in various other affairs. ' He in- 
itiated me,' says Beaumarchais, ' into the secrets 
of finance, of which, as every one knows, he was a 
consummate master.' " 

Such was government in the good old times ! I 
like to think of it when things go amiss in Wash- 
ington or Albany. Let our rulers do as badly as 
they may, they cannot do worse than the rulers of 
the world did a century and a half ago. If any 
good or great thing was done in those days, it was 
done in spite of the government. 



SIE ROWLAND HILL. 



The poet Coleridge, on one of his long walks 
among the English lakes, stopped at a roadside inn 
for dinner, and while he was there the letter-carrier 
came in, bringing a letter for the girl who was wait- 
ing upon him. The postage was a shilling, nearly 
twenty-five cents. She looked long and lovingly at 
the letter, holding it in her hand, and then gave it 
back to the man, telling him that she could not af- 
ford to pay the postage. Coleridge at once offered 
the shilling, which the girl after much hesitation 
accepted. When the carrier was gone she told 
him that he had thrown his shilling away, for the 
pretended letter was only a blank sheet of paper. 
On the outside there were some small marks which 
she had carefully noted before giving the letter 
back to the carrier. Those marks were the letter^ 
which was from her brother, with whom she had 
agreed upon a short - hand system by which to 
communicate news without expense. " We are so 
poor," said she to the poet, " that we have invented 
this manner of corresponding and sending our let- 
ters free." 



SIR ROWLAND HILL. 343 

The shilling which the postman demanded was, 
in fact, about a week's wages to a girl in her con- 
dition fifty years ago. Nor was it poor girls only 
who then played tricks upon the post-office. En- 
velopes franked by honorable members of Parlia- 
ment were a common article of merchandise, for it 
was the practice of their clerks and servants to 
procure and sell them. Indeed, the postal laws 
were so generally evaded that, in some large towns, 
the department was cheated of three quarters of its 
revenue. Who can wonder at it? It cost more 
then to send a letter from one end of London to 
the other, or from New York to Harlem, than it 
now does to send a letter from Egypt to San Fran- 
cisco. The worst effect of dear postage was the 
obstacles it placed in the way of correspondence be- 
tween poor families who were separated by distance. 
It made correspondence next to impossible between 
poor people in Europe and their relations in Amer- 
ica. Think of an Irish laborer who earned six- 
pence a day paying seventy-five cents to get news 
from a daughter in Cincinnati ! It required the 
savings of three or four months. 

The man who changed all this. Sir Rowland Hill, 
died only three years ago at the age of eighty- 
three. I have often said that an American ought 
to have invented the new postal system ; and Row- 
land Hill, though born and reared in England, and 
descended from a long line of English ancestors, 
was very much an American. He was educated on 



344 CAPTATNS OF INDUSTRY. 

the American plan. His mind was American, and 
he had the American way of looking at things with 
a view to improving them. 

His father was a Birmingham schoolmaster, a 
free trader, and more than half a republican. He 
brought up his six sons and two daughters to use 
their minds and their tongues. His eldest son, the 
recorder of Birmingham, once wrote of his father 
thus : — 

" Perhaps the greatest obligation we owe our fa- 
ther is this : that, from infancy, he would reason 
with us, and so observe all the rules of fair play, 
that we iDut forth our little strength without fear. 
Arguments were taken at their just weight; the 
sword of authority was not thrown into the scale." 

Miss Edgeworth's tales deeply impressed the boy, 
and he made up his mind in childhood to follow the 
path which she recommended, and do something* 
which should greatly benefit mankind. 

At the age of eleven he began to assist in teach- 
ing his father's pupils. At twelve he was a pupil 
no more, and gave himself wholly up to teaching. 
Long before he was of age he had taken upon him- 
self all the mere business of the school, and man- 
aged it so well as to pay off debts which had weighed 
heavily upon the family ever since he was born. At 
the same time he invented new methods of govern- 
ing the school. He was one of the first to abolish 
corporal punishment. He converted his school into 
a republic governed by a constitution and code of 



SIR ROWLAND HILL. 345 

laws, whicti filled a printed volume of more than a 
hundred pages, which is still in the possession of 
his family. His school, we are told, was governed 
by it for many years. If a boy was accused of a 
fault, he had the right of being tried by a jury of 
his school-fellows. Monitors were elected by the 
boys, and these monitors met to deliberate upon 
school matters as a little parliament. 

Upon looking back in old age upon this wonder- 
ful school, he doubted very much whether the plan 
was altogether good. The democratic idea, he 
thought, was carried too far ; it made the boys too 
positive and argumentative. 

"I greatly doubt," said he once, "if I should 
send my own son to a school conducted on such a 
complicated system." 

It had, nevertheless, admirable features, which 
he originated, and which are now generally adopted. 
Toward middle life he became tired of this labo< 
rious business, though he had the largest private 
school in that part of England. His health failed, 
and he felt the need of change and rest. Having 
now some leisure upon his hands he began to in- 
vent and project. 

His attention was first called to the postal sys- 
tem merely by the high price of postage. It struck 
him as absurd that it should cost thirteen pence to 
convey half an ounce of paper from London to 
Birmingham, while several pounds of merchandise 
could be carried for sixpence. Upon studying the 



346 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

subject, lie found that the mere carriage of a letter 
between two post-offices cost scarcely anything, 
the chief expense being incurred at the post-offices 
in starting and receiving it. He found that the 
actual cost of conveying a letter from London to 
Edinburgh, four hundred and four miles, was one 
eighteenth of a cent ! This fact it was which led 
him to the admirable idea of the uniform rate of 
one penny — for all distances. 

At that time a letter from London to Edinburgh 
was charged about twenty-eight cents; but if it 
contained the smallest inclosure, even half a bank- 
note, or a strip of tissue paper, the postage was 
doubled. In short, the whole service was incum- 
bered with absurdities, which no one noticed be- 
cause they were old. In 1837, after an exhaustive 
study of the whole system, he published his pam- 
phlet, entitled Post-Office Reforms, in which he 
suggested his improvements, and gave the reasons 
for them. The post-office department, of course, 
treated his suggestions with complete contempt. 
But the public took a different view of the matter. 
The press warmly advocated his reforms. The 
thunderer of the London " Times " favored them. 
Petitions poured into Parliament. Daniel O'Con- 
nell spoke in its favor. 

" Consider, my lord," said he to the premier, 
"that a letter to Ireland and the answer back 
would cost thousands upon thousands of my poor 
and affectionate countrymen more than a fifth of 



SIR ROWLAND HILL. 347 

their week's wages. If you shut the post-office to 
them, which you do now, you shut out warm hearts 
and generous affections from home, kindred, and 
friends." 

The ministry yielded, and on January 10, 1840, 
penny postage became the law of the British Em- 
pire. As the whole postal service had to be reor- 
ganized, the government offered Rowland Hill the 
task of introducing the new system, and proposed 
to give him five hundred pounds a year for two 
years. He spurned the proposal, and offered to 
do the work for nothing. He was then offered fif- 
teen hundred pounds a year for two years, and 
this he accepted rather than see his plan misman- 
aged by persons who did not believe in it. After 
many difficulties, the new system was set in mo- 
tion, and was a triumphant success from the first 
year. 

A Tory ministry coming in, they had the incred- 
ible folly to dismiss the reformer, and he retired 
from the public service without reward. The Eng- 
lish people are not accustomed to have their faith- 
ful servants treated in that manner, and there was 
a imiversal burst of indigiaation. A national testi- 
monial was started. A public dinner was given 
him, at which he was presented with a check for 
sixty-five thousand dollars. He was afterwards 
placed in charge of the post-office department, al- 
though with a lord over his head as nominal chiief. 
This lord was a Tory of the old school, and wished 



348 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

to use the post-office to reward political and per- 
sonal friends. Rowland Hill said : — 

" No, my lord ; appointment and promotion for 
merit only." 

They quarreled upon this point, and Rowland 
Hill resigned. The queen sent a message to the 
House of Commons asking for twenty thousand 
pounds as a national gift to Sir Rowland Hill, 
which was granted, and he was also allowed to re- 
tire from office upon his full salary of two thousand 
pounds a year. That is the way to treat a public 
benefactor ; and nations which treat their servants 
in that spirit are likely to be well served. 

The consequences of this postal reform are mar- 
velous to think of. The year before the new plan 
was adopted in Great Britain, one hundred and six 
millions of letters and papers were sent through 
the post-office. Year before last the number was 
one thousand four hundred and seventy-eight mil- 
lions. In other words, the average number of let- 
ters per inhabitant has increased from three per 
annum to thirty-two. The United States, which 
ought to have taken the lead in this matter, was 
not slow to follow, and every civilized country has 
since adopted the system. 

A few weeks before Sir Rowland Hill's death, 
the freedom of the city of London was presented 
to him in a gold box. He died in August, 1881, 
fviU of years and honors. 



MARIE-ANTOINE CAEEME, 

FEENCH COOK. 



Domestic servants occupy in France a some- 
wliat more elevated position in the social scale than 
is accorded them in other countries. As a class, 
too, they are more intelligent, better educated, and 
more skillful than servants elsewhere. There are 
several works in the French language designed ex- 
pressly for their instruction, some of the best of 
which were written, or professed to have been writ- 
ten, by servants. On the counter of a French book- 
store you will sometimes see such works as the fol- 
lowing : " The Perfect Coachman," " The Life of 
Jasmin, the Good Laquey," " Rules for the Govern- 
ment of Shepherds and Shepherdesses, by the Good 
Shepherd," "The Well-Eegulated Household," 
" Duties of Servants of both Sexes toward God and 
toward their Masters and Mistresses, by a Servant," 
" How to Train a Good Domestic." 

Some books of this kind are of considerable an- 
tiquity and have assisted in forming several gener- 
ations of domestic servants. One of them, it is 
said, entitled, " The Perfect Coachman," was writ- 



350 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

ten by a prince of the reigning house of FrancBo 
In France, as in most old countries, few people ex= 
pect to change their condition in life. Once a ser- 
vant, always a servant. It is common for parents 
in humble life to apprentice their children to some 
branch of domestic service, satisfied if they become 
excellent in their vocation, and win at length the 
distinctions and promotions which belong to it. 

Lady Morgan, who visited Paris several years 
ago, relates an anecdote or two showing how intelli- 
gent some French servants are. She was walking 
along the Quai Voltaire, followed by her French 
lackey, when he suddenly came to her side and, 
pointing to a house, said : — 

" There^ madam, is a house consecrated to gen- 
ius. There died Voltaire — in that apartment with 
the shutters closed. There died the first of our 
great men ; perhaps also the last." 

On another occasion the same man objected to a 
note which she had written in the French lan- 
guage. 

"Is it not good French, then? " asked the lady. 

" Oh, yes, madam," replied he ; "the French is 
very good, but the style is too cold. You begin by 
saying. You regret that you cannot have the pleas- 
ure. You should say, I am in despair." 

" Well, then," said Lady Morgan, " write it 
yourself." 

" You may write it, if you please, my lady, at my 
dictation, for as to reading and writing, they are 



MARIE-ANTOJNE CAR^ME. 351 

branches of my education which were totally neg- 
lected." 

The lady remarks, however, that Paris servants 
can usually read very well, and that hackmen, water- 
carriers, and porters may frequently be seen read- 
ing a classical author while waiting for a customer. 

A very remarkable case in point is Marie- An- 
toine Careme, whom a French writer styles, " one 
of the princes of the culinary art." I suppose that 
no country in the world but France could produce 
such a character. Of this, however, the reader can 
judge when I have briefly told his story. 

He was born in a Paris garret, in 1784, one of 
a family of fifteen children, the offspring of a poor 
workman. As soon as he was old enough to ren- 
der a little service, his father placed him as a gar- 
^on in a cheap and low restaurant, where he re- 
ceived nothing for his labor except his food. 

This was an humble beginning for a " prince." 
But he improved his disadvantages to such a de- 
gree that, at the age of twenty, he entered the 
kitchen of Talleyrand. Now Prince Talleyrand, 
besides being himself one of the daintiest men in 
Europe, had to entertain, as minister of foreign 
affairs, the diplomatic corps, and a large number 
of other persons accustomed from their youth up 
to artistic cookery. Careme proved equal to the 
situation. Talleyrand's dinners were renowned 
throughout Europe and America. But this cook 
of genius, not satisfied with his attainments, took 



352 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

lessons in the art from Guipiere, the renowned 
chef of the Emperor Napoleon — he who followed 
Murat into the wilds of Eussia and perished with 
so many other cooks and heroes. 

Careme appears to have succeeded Guipiere in 
the Imperial kitchen, but he did not follow the 
Emperor to Elba. When the allied kings cele- 
brated their triumph in Paris at a grand banquet, 
it was Careme who, as the French say, " executed 
the repast." His brilliant success on this occasion 
was trumpeted over Europe, and after the final 
downfall of Napoleon he was invited to take charge 
of the kitchen of the English Prince Regent. At 
various times during his career he was cook to the 
Emperor Alexander of Russia, to the Emperor of 
Austria, to the Prince of Wurtemberg, and to the 
head of the house of Rothschild. In the service of 
these illustrious eaters he gained large sums of 
money, which, however, he was very far from hoard- 
ing. 

In the maturity of his powers he devoted himself 
and his fortune to historical investigations concern- 
ing the art of cookery. For several years he was 
to be daily seen in the Imperial Library, studying 
the cookery, so renowned, of the ancient Greeks and 
Romans, desiring especially to know whether they 
possessed any secrets which had been lost. His 
conclusion was, that the dishes served upon the ta- 
bles of LucuUus, Augustus Caesar, and others, were 
" utterly bad and atrociously stupid." But he com- 



MARIE-ANTOINE CARiJME. 353 

mended the decoration of their tables, the cups and 
vases of gold, the beautiful pitchers, the chased sil- 
ver, the candles of white Spanish wax, the fabrics of 
silk whiter than the snow, and the beautiful flowers 
with which their tables were covered. He published 
the results of his labors in a large octavo volume, 
illustrated by a hundred and twenty-eight engrav- 
ings. He continued his studious labors, and pub- 
lished at various periods " Ancient and Modern 
Cookery Compared," in two volumes, octavo, " The 
Paris Cook, or the Art of Cooking in the Nine- 
teenth Century," and others. Toward the close of 
his life, he wrote a magazine article upon Napo- 
leon's way of eating at St. Helena. 

He dedicated one of his works to his great in- 
structor and master in the art of cookery, Guipi^re. 
To give the reader an idea of his way of thinking 
and feeling I will translate a few sentences of this 
dedication : — 

" Eise, illustrious Shade ! Hear the voice of the 
man who was your admirer and your pupil ! Your 
distinguished talents brought upon you hatred and 
persecution. By cabal you were obliged to leave 
your beautiful native land, and go into Italy to 
serve a prince (Murat) to whose enjoyment you 
had once ministered in Paris. You followed your 
king into Russia. But alas, by a deplorable fatal- 
ity, you perished miserably, your feet and body 
frozen by the frightful climate of the north. Ar- 
rived at Vilna, your generous prince lavished gold 



354 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

to save you, but in vain. O great Guipi^re, re« 
ceive the public homage of a faithful disciple. Re- 
gardless of those who envied you, I wish to associ- 
ate your name with my labors. I bequeath to your 
memory my most beautiful work. It will convey 
to future ages a knowledge of the elegance and 
splendor of the culinary art in the nineteenth cen- 
tury ; and if Vatel rendered himself illustrious by 
a point of honor, dear to every man of merit, your 
unhappy end, O Guipi^re, renders you worthy of 
the same homage ! It was that point of honor 
which made you follow your prince into Russia, 
when your gray hairs seemed to assure you a hap- 
pier destiny in Paris. You shared the sad fate of 
our old veterans, and the honor of our warriors 
perishing of hunger and cold." 

All this, the reader will admit, is very strange 
and very French. In the same work, Car^me 
chronicles the names of aU the celebrated cooks 
who perished in the retreat from Russia. This 
prince of the kitchen died in 1833, when he was 
scarcely fifty years of age. His works are still 
well known in France, and some of them have 
passed through more than one edition. It is an 
odd contradiction, that the name of this prince of 
the kitchen should be the French word for the 
time of fasting. Careme means Lent. 



WONDEEFUL WALKER. 



I HAVE here a good story for hard times. It is 
of a clergyman and cotton spinner of the Church 
of England, who, upon an income of twenty-four 
pounds a year, lived very comfortably to the age of 
ninety-four years, reared a family of eight chil- 
dren respectably, gave two of his sons a University 
education, and left an estate worth two thousand 
pounds. 

Every one will admit that this was a good deal 
to do upon a salary of one hundred and twenty dol- 
lars ; and some readers, who find the winter hard 
to get through, may be interested to know how he 
did it. To this day, though he has been dead one 
hundred years, he is spoken of in the region where 
he lived, as Wonderful Walker. By this epithet, 
also, he is spoken of by the poet Wordsworth, in 
the " Excursion : " — 

" And him, the Wonderful, 
Our simple shepherds, speaking from the heart, 
Deservedly have styled. " 

He lived and died in the lake country of Eng- 
land, near the residence of Wordsworth, who has 



356 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

embalmed him in verse, and described him in 
prose. Robert Walker, the youngest of twelve 
children, the son of a yeoman of small estate, was 
bred a scholar because he was of a frame too del- 
icate, as his father thought, to earn his livelihood 
by bodily labor. He struggled into a competent 
knowledge of the classics and divinity, gained in 
strength as he advanced towards manhood, and by 
the time he was ordained was as vigorous and alert 
as most men of his age. 

After his ordination, he had his choice of two 
curacies of the same revenue, namely, five pounds 
a year — twenty-five dollars. One of these, Sea- 
thwaite by name, too insignificant a place to figure 
upon a map, or even in the " Gazetteer," was sit- 
uated in his native valley, in the church of which 
he had gone to school in his childhood. He chose 
Seathwaite, but not for that reason. He was in 
love ; he wished to marry ; and this parish had a 
small parsonage attached to it, with a garden of 
three quarters of an acre. The person to whom he 
was engaged was a comely and intelligent domes- 
tic servant such as then could frequently be found 
in the sequestered parts of England. She had 
saved, it appears, from her wages the handsome 
sum of forty pounds. Thus j)rovided, he married, 
and entered upon his curacy in his twenty-sixth 
year, and set up housekeeping in his little parson- 
age. 

Every one knows what kind of families poor cler- 



WONDERFUL WALKER. 357 

gymen are apt to have. Wonderful Walker had 
one o£ that kind. About every two years, or less, a 
child arrived ; and heartily welcome they all were, 
and deeply the parents mourned the loss of one 
that died. In the course of a few years, eight 
bouncing girls and boys filled his little house ; and 
the question recurs with force : How did he sup- 
port them all ? From Queen Anne's bounty, and 
other sources, his income was increased to the sum 
mentioned above, twenty-four pounds. That for a 
beginning. Now for the rest. 

In the first place, he was the lawyer of his par- 
ish, as well as its notary, conveyancer, appraiser, 
and arbitrator. He drew the wills, contracts, and 
deeds, charging for such services a moderate fee, 
which added to his little store of cash. His labors 
of this kind, at the beginning of the year, when 
most contracts were made, were often extremely se- 
vere, occupying sometimes half the night, or even 
all night. Then he made the most of his garden, 
which was tilled by his own hands, until his chil- 
dren were old enough to help him. Upon the moun- 
tains near by, having a right of pasturage, he kept 
two cows and some sheep, which supplied the fam- 
ily with all their milk and butter, nearly all their 
meat, and most of their clothes. He also rented 
two or three acres of land, upon which he raised 
various crops. In sheep-shearing time, he turned 
out and helped his neighbors shear their sheep, 
a kind of work in which he had eminent skill. 



358 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

As compensation, each farmer thus assisted gave 
him a fleece. In haying- time, too, he and his boys 
were in the fields lending a hand, and got some 
good hay-cocks for their pains. 

Besides all this, he was the school-master of the 
parish. Mr. Wordsworth positively says that, dur- 
ing most of the year, except when farm work was 
very pressing, he taught school eight hours a day 
for five days in the week, and four hours on Satur- 
day. The school-room was the church. The mas- 
ter's seat was inside the rails of the altar ; he used 
the communion table for a desk ; and there, during 
the whole day, while the children were learning and 
saying their lessons, he kept his spinning-wheel in 
motion. In the evening, when school was over, 
feeling the need of exercise, he changed the small 
spinning-wheel at which he had sat all day for a 
large one, which required the spinner to step to 
and fro. 

There was absolutely no waste and no luxury 
known in his house. The only indulgence which 
looked like luxury was that, on a Saturday after- 
noon, he would read a newspaper or a magazine. 
The clothes of the whole family were grown, spun, 
woven, and made by themselves. The fuel of the 
house, which was peat, was dug, dried, and carried 
by themselves. They made their own candles. 
Once a month a sheep was selected from their lit. 
tie flock and killed for the use of the family, and 
in the fall a cow would be salted and dried for the 



WONDERFUL WALKER. 359 

winter, the hide being tanned for the family shoes. 
No house was more hos^Ditable, nor any hand more 
generous, than those of this excellent man. Old 
parishioners, who walked to church from a distance 
and wished to remain for the afternoon service, 
were always welcome to dinner at the parsonage, 
and sometimes these guests were so numerous that 
it took the family half the week to eat up the cold 
broken remains. He had something always to 
spare to make things decent and becoming. His 
sister's pew in the chapel he lined neatly with 
woolen cloth of his own making. 

"It is the only pew in the chapel so distin- 
guished," writes the poet, " and I know of no other 
instance of his conformity to the delicate accommo- 
dations of modern times." 

Nineteen or twenty years elapsed before this sin- 
gular and interesting man attracted any public no- 
tice. His parishioners, indeed, held him in great 
esteem, for he was one of those men who are not 
only virtuous, but who render virtue engaging and 
attractive. If they revered him as a benevolent, a 
wise, and a temperate man, they loved him as a 
cheerful, friendly, and genial soul. He was gay 
and merry at Christmas, and his goodness was of a 
kind which allures while it rebukes. But beyond 
the vale of Seathwaite, he was unknown until the 
year 1754, when a traveler discovered him, and 
published an account of his way of life. 

" I found him," writes this traveler. " sitting at 



860 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

tlie head of a long square table, dressed in a coarse 
blue frock, trimmed with black horn buttons, a 
checked shirt, a leathern strap about his neck for a 
stock, a coarse apron, a pair of great wooden soled 
shoes, plated with iron to preserve them, with a 
child upon his knee, eating his breakfast. His wife 
and the remainder of his children were, some of 
them, employed in waiting upon each other, the 
rest in teasing and spinning wool, at which trade he 
is a great proficient ; and, moreover, when it is 
ready for sale, he will lay it upon his back, sixteen 
or thirty-two pounds' weight, and carry it on foot 
to the market, seven or eight miles." 

He spoke also of his cheerfulness, and the good 
humor which prevailed in the family, the simplic- 
ity of his doctrine, and the apostolic fervor of his 
preaching ; for, it seems, he was an excellent 
preacher as well. The publication of this account 
drew attention to the extreme smallness of his cler- 
ical income, and the bishop offered to annex to 
Seathwaite an adjacent parish, which also yielded 
a revenue of five pounds a year. By preaching at 
one church in the morning, and the other in the 
afternoon, he could serve both parishes, and draw 
both stipends. Wonderful Walker declined the 
bishop's offer. 

" The annexation," he wrote to the bishop, " would 
be apt to cause a general discontent among the in- 
habitants of both places, by either thinking them- 
selves slighted, being only served alternately or neg* 



WONDERFUL WALKER. 361 

lected in tlie duty, or attributing it to covetousness ; 
all of wMch occasions of murmuring I would will- 
ingly avoid." 

Mr. Wordsworth, to whom we are indebted for 
this letter, mentions that, in addition to his other 
gifts and graces, he had a "beautiful handwriting." 

This admirable man continued to serve his little 
parish for nearly sixty-eight years. His children 
grew up about him. Two of his sons became cler- 
gymen of the Church of England ; one learned the 
trade of a tanner ; four of his daughters were hap- 
pily married ; and, occasionally, all the children 
and grandchildren, a great company of healthy and 
happy people, spent Christmas together, and went to 
church, and partook of the communion together, 
this one family filling the whole altar. 

The good old wife died first. At her funeral the 
venerable man, past ninety years of age, had the 
body borne to the grave by three of her daughters 
and one granddaughter. When the corpse was 
lifted, he insisted upon lending a hand, and he felt 
about (for he was almost blind) until he got hold 
of a cloth that was fastened to the coffin ; and thus, 
as one of the bearers of the body, he entered the 
church where she was to be buried. 

The old man, who had preached with much vigor 
and great clearness until then sensibly drooped 
after the loss of his wife. His voice faltered as he 
preached ; he kept looking at the seat in which she 
had sat, where he had watched her kind and beauti- 



862 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

ful face for more than sixty years. He could not 
pass her grave without tears. But though sad and 
melancholy when alone, he resumed his cheerful- 
ness and good-humor when friends were about him. 
One night, in his ninety-fourth year, he tottered 
upon his daughter's arm, as his custom was, to the 
door, to look out for a moment upon the sky. 

" How clear," said he, " the moon shines to- 
night." 

In the course of that night he passed peacefully 
away. At six the next morning he was found dead 
upon the couch where his daughter had left him. 
Of all the men of whom I have ever read, this man, 
I think, was the most virtuous and the most fortu- 
nate. 



SIE CHRISTOPHER WREN. 



Of the out-of-door sights of London, none makes 
upon the stranger's mind so lasting an impression 
as huge St. Paul's, the great black dome of which 
often seems to hang over the city poised and still, 
like a balloon in a calm, while the rest of the edi- 
fice is buried out of sight in the fog and smoke. 
The visitor is continually coming in sight of this 
dome, standing out in the clearest outline when all 
lower objects are obscure or hidden. Insensibly he 
forms a kind of attachment to it, at the expression 
of which the hardened old Londoner is amused; 
for he may have passed the building twice a day 
for forty years without ever having had the curios- 
ity to enter its doors, or even to cast a glance up- 
wards at its sublime proportions. 

It is the verdant American who is penetrated 
to the heart by these august triumphs of human 
skill and daring. It is we who, on going down 
into the crypt of St. Paul's, are so deeply moved 
at the inscription upon the tomb of the architect of 
the cathedral : — 

" Underneath is laid the builder of this church 



364 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

and city, Cliristoplier Wren, who lived more than 
ninety years, not for himself, but for the public 
good. Reader, if you seek his monument, look 
around ! " 

The writer of this inscription, when he used the 
word circumspice, which we translate look around, 
did not intend probably to confine the reader's at- 
tention to St. Paul's. Much of the old part of 
London is adorned by proofs of Wren's skill and 
taste ; for it was he who rebuilt most of the 
churches and other public buildings which were 
destroyed by the great fire of London in 1666. He 
built or rebuilt fifty-five churches in London alone, 
besides thirty-six halls for the guilds and mechan- 
ics' societies. The royal palaces of Hampton Court 
and Kensington were chiefly his work. He was 
the architect of Temple Bar, Drury Lane Theatre, 
the Royal Exchange, and the Monument. It was 
he who adapted the ancient palace at Greenwich to 
its present purpose, a retreat for old sailors. The 
beautiful city of Oxford, too, contains colleges and 
churches constructed or reconstructed by him. It 
is doubtful if any other man of his profession ever 
did so much work as he, and certainly none ever 
worked more faithfully. 

With all this, he was a self-taught architect. 
He was neither intended by his father to pursue 
that profession, nor did he ever receive instruction 
in it from an architect. He came of an old family 
of high rank in the Church of England, his father, 



SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. 365 

a clergyman richly provided witli benefices, and his 
uncle being that famous Bishop of Ely who was 
imprisoned in the Tower eighteen years for his ad- 
herence to the royal cause in the time of the Com- 
monwealth. 

He derived his love of architecture from his fa- 
ther, Dr. Christopher Wren, a mathematician, a 
musician, a draughtsman, who liked to employ his 
leisure in repairing and decorating the churches 
under his charge. Dr. Wren had much mechan- 
ical skill, and devised some new methods of support- 
ing the roofs of large buildings. He was the ideal 
churchman, bland, dignified, scholarly, and ingen- 
ious. 

His son Christopher, born in 1631 (the year af- 
ter Boston was founded), inherited his father's pro- 
pensities, with more than his father's talents. 
Like many other children destined to enjoy ninety 
years of happy life, he was of such delicate health 
as to require constant attention from all his family 
to prolong his existence. As the years went on, 
he became sufficiently robust, and passed through 
Westminster school to Oxford, where he was re^ 
garded as a prodigy of learning and ability. 

John Evelyn, who visited Oxford when Wren 
was a student there, speaks of visiting " that mir- 
acle of a youth, Mr. Christopher Wren, nephew of 
the Bishop of Ely." He also mentions calling 
upon one of the professors, at whose house "that 
prodigious young scholar, Mr. Christopher Wren," 



366 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

showed him a thermometer, " a monstrous magnet," 
some dials, and a piece of white marble stained 
red, and many other curiosities, some of which 
were the young scholar's own work. 

There never had been such an interest before in 
science and invention. The work of Lord Bacon 
in which he explained to the scholars of Europe 
the best way of discovering truth (by experiment, 
comparison, and observation) was beginning to bear 
fruit. A number of gentlemen at Oxford were 
accustomed to meet once a week at one another's 
houses for the purpose of making and reporting 
experiments, and thus accumulating the facts lead- 
ing to the discovery of principles. This little so- 
cial club, of which Christopher Wren was a most 
active and zealous member, grew afterwards into 
the famous Royal Society, of which Sir Isaac New- 
ton was president, and to which he first communi- 
cated his most important discoveries. 

All subjects seem to have been discussed by the 
Oxford club except theology and politics, which 
were becoming a little too exciting for philosophic 
treatment. Wren was in the fullest sympathy 
with the new scientific spirit, and during all the 
contention between king and Parliament he and 
his friends were quietly developing the science 
which was to change the face of the world, and 
finally make such wasteful wars impossible. A mere 
catalogue of Christopher Wren's conjectures, exper- 
iments, and inventions, made while he was an Ox- 



SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. 367 

ford student, would more than fill the space I have 
at command. 

At the age of twenty-four he was offered a pro- 
fessorship of astronomy at Oxford, which he mod- 
estly declined as being above his age, but after- 
wards accepted. His own astronomy was sadly 
deficient, for he supposed the circumference of our 
earth to be 216,000 miles. This, however, was be- 
fore Sir Isaac Newton had published the true as- 
tronomy, or had himself learned it. 

After a most honorable career as teacher of sci- 
ence at Oxford, he received from the restored king, 
Charles II., the appointment of assistant to the 
Surveyor General of Works, an office which placed 
him in charge of public buildings in course of con- 
struction. It made him, in due time, the architect- 
general of England, and it was in that capacity 
that he designed and superintended very many of 
the long series of works mentioned above. There 
never was a more economical appointment. The 
salary which he drew from the king appears to 
have been two hundred pounds a year, a sum equal 
perhaps to four thousand of our present dollars. 
Such was the modest compensation of the gTeat ar- 
chitect who rebuilt London after the great fire. 

That catastrophe occurred a few years after his 
appointment. The fire continued to rage for nearly 
four days, during which it destroyed eighty-nine 
churches including St. Paul's, thirteen thousand 
two hundred houses, and laid waste four hundred 
streets. 



368 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Cliristoplier Wren was tlien thirty-five years of 
age. He promptly exhibited to the king a plan 
for rebuilding the city, which proposed the widen- 
ing and straightening of the old streets, suggested a 
broad highway along the bank of the river, an am- 
ple space about St. Paul's, and many other improve- 
ments which would have saved posterity a world of 
trouble and expense. The government of the dis- 
solute Charles was neither wise enough nor strong 
enough to carry out the scheme, and Sir Christo- 
pher was obliged to content himself with a sorry 
compromise. 

The rest of his life was spent in rebuilding the 
public edifices, his chief work being the great ca- 
thedral. Upon that vast edifice he labored for thir- 
ty-five years. When the first stone of it was laid, 
his son Christopher was a year old. It was that 
son, a man of thirty-six, who placed the last stone 
of the lantern above the dome, in the presence of 
the architect, the master builder, and a number of 
masons. This was in the year 1710. Sir Christo- 
pher lived thirteen years longer, withdrawn from 
active life in the country. Once a year, however, 
it was his custom to visit the city, and sit for a 
while under the dome of the cathedral. He died 
peacefully while dozing in his arm-chair after din- 
ner, in 1723, aged ninety-two years, having lived 
one of the most interesting and victorious lives ever 
enjoyed by a mortal. 

If the people of London are proud of what was 



SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. 369 

done by Sir Christopher Wren, they lament per- 
haps still more what he was not permitted to do. 
They are now attempting to execute some of his 
plans. Miss Lucy Phillimore, his biographer, 
says : — 

" Wren laid before the king and Parliament a 
model of the city as he proposed to build it, with 
full explanations of the details of the design. The 
street leading up Ludgate Hill, instead of being the 
confined, winding approach to St. Paul's that it 
now is, even its crooked picturesqueness marred by 
the Viaduct that cuts all the lines of the cathedral, 
gradually widened as it approached St. Paul's, and 
divided itself into two great streets, ninety feet 
wide at the least, which ran on either side of the 
cathedral, leaving a large open space in which it 
stood. Of the two streets, one ran parallel with 
the river until it reached the Tower, and the other 
led to the Exchange, which Wren meant to be the 
centre of the city, standing in a great piazza, to 
which ten streets each sixty feet wide converged, 
and around which were placed the Post-Of&ce, the 
Mint, the Excise Office, the Goldsmiths' Hall, and 
the Insurance, forming the outside of the piazza. 
The smallest streets were to be thirty feet wide, ' ex- 
cluding all narrow, dark alleys without thorough- 
fares, and courts.' 

" The churches were to occupy commanding posi- 
tions along the principal thoroughfares, and to be 
' designed according to the best forms for capacity 



370 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

and hearing, adorned with useful porticoes and 
lofty ornamental towers and steeples in the greater 
parishes. All church yards, gardens, and unneces- 
sary vacuities, and all trades that use great fires or 
yield noisome smells to be placed out of town.' 

" He intended that the church yards should be 
carefully planted and adorned, and be a sort of 
girdle round the town, wishing them to be an orna- 
ment to the city, and also a check upon its growth. 
To burials within the walls of the town he strongly 
objected, and the experience derived from the year 
of the plague confirmed his judgment. No gar- 
dens or squares are mentioned in the plan, for he 
had provided, as he thought, sufficiently for the 
healthiness of the town by his wide streets and nu- 
merous open spaces for markets. Gardening in 
towns was an art little considered in his day, and 
contemporary descriptions show us that ' vacuities ' 
were speedily filled with heaps of dust and refuse. 

"The London bank of the Thames was to be 
lined with a broad quay along which the haUs of the 
city companies were to be built, with suitable ware- 
houses in between for the merchants' to vary the ef- 
fect of the edifices. The little stream whose name 
survives in Fleet Street was to be brought to light, 
cleansed, and made serviceable as a canal one hun- 
dred and twenty feet wide, running much in the line 
of the present Holborn Viaduct." 

These were the wise and large thoughts of a 
great citizen for the metropolis of his country. 



SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. 371 

But the king was Charles II. ! Our race produces 
good citizens in great numbers, and great citizens 
not a few, but the supreme difficulty of civiliza- 
tion is to get a few such where they can direct and 
control. 



SIK JOHN RENNIE, 

ENGINEEK. 



One of tlie most striking city scenes in the world 
is the view of London as you approach London 
Bridge in one of the small, low-decked steamers 
which ply upon the Thames. London stands where 
navigation for sea-going vessels ceases on this fa- 
mous stream, which is crossed at London, within 
a stretch of three or four miles, by about fifteen 
bridges, of which seven or eight can be seen at one 
view under the middle arch of London Bridge. 

Over all these bridges there is a ceaseless tide of 
human life, and in the river below, besides long 
lines of ships at anchor and unloading, there are as 
many steam -vessels, barges, skiffs, and wherries as 
can find safe passage. A scene more animated, 
picturesque, and grand is nowhere else presented, 
especially when the great black dome of St. Paul's 
is visible, hanging over it, appearing to be sus- 
pended in the foggy atmosphere like a black bal- 
loon, the cathedral itseK being invisible. 

Three of these bridges were built by the engi- 
neers, father and son, whose name appears at the 



SIR JOHN RENNIE. 373 

head of tliis article, and those three are among the 
most wonderful structures of their kind. One of 
these is London Bridge ; another is called South- 
wark, and the third, Waterloo. The time may 
come when the man who builds bridges will be as 
celebrated as the man who batters them down with 
cannon ; but, at present, for one person who knows 
the name of Sir John Rennie there are a thou- 
sand who are familiar with Wellington and Water- 
loo. 

He had, however, a pedigree longer than that of 
some lords. His father was a very great engineer 
before him, and that father acquired his training 
in practical mechanics under a Scotch firm of ma- 
chinists and mill-wrights which dates back to the 
reign of Charles the Second. It is to be particu- 
larly noted that both John Rennie, the elder, and 
Sir John, his son, derived an important part of 
their education in the work-shop and model-room. 
Both of them, indeed, had an ideal education ; for 
they enjoyed the best theoretical instruction which 
their age and country could furnish, and the best 
practical training also. Theory and practice went 
hand in hand. While the intellect was nourished, 
the body was developed, the hand acquired skill, 
and the eyesight, certainty. It is impossible to im- 
agine a better education for a young man than for 
him to receive instruction at Edinburgh Univer- 
sity under the illustrious Professor Black, and af- 
terwards a training in practical mechanics under 



374 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Andrew Meikle, one of the best mechanics then 
living. This was the fortunate lot of Rennie's 
father, who wisely determined that his son should 
have the same advantage. 

When the boy had passed through the prepara- 
tory schools, the question arose, whether he should 
be sent to one of the universities, or should go at 
once into the workshop. His father frequently 
said that the real foundation of civil engineering 
is mechanics, theoretical and practical. He did 
not believe that a young man could become an en- 
gineer by sitting in a class-room and hearing lec- 
tures ; but that he must be placed in contact with 
realities, with materials, with tools, with men, with 
difficulties, make mistakes, achieve successes, and 
thus acquire the blended boldness and caution 
which mark the great men in this profession. It is 
a fact that the greatest engineers of the past cen- 
tury, whatever else they may have had or lacked, 
were thoroughly versed in practical mechanics. 
Smeaton, Telford, Arkwright, Hargreaves, George 
Stephenson, Kennie, were all men who, as they used 
to say, had " an ounce of theory to a pound of prac- 
tice." 

Young Rennie worked eight hours a day in the 
practical part of his profession, and spent four in 
the acquisition of science and the modern lan- 
guages, aided in both by the first men in London 
in their branches. Four or five years of this train- 
ing gave him, as he says in his autobiography, the 



SIR JOHN RENNIE. 375 

" rudiments " of his profession. His father next 
determined to give him some experience in bearing 
responsibility, and placed him as an assistant to 
the resident-engineer of Waterloo Bridge, then in 
course of construction. He was but nineteen years 
of age ; but, being the son of the head of the firm, 
'he was naturally deferred to and prepared to take 
the lead. Soon after, the Southwark Bridge was 
begun, which the young man superintended daily 
at every stage of its construction. 

English engineers regard this bridge as the ne 
plus ultra of bridge-building. A recent writer 
sj)eaks of it as " confessedly unrivaled as regards 
its colossal proportions, its architectural effect, or 
the general simplicity and massive character of its 
details." It crosses the river by three arches, of 
which the central one has a span of two hundred 
and forty feet, and it is built at a place where the 
river at high tide is thirty-six feet deep. The cost 
of this bridge was four millions of dollars, and it re- 
quired five years to build it. The bridge is of iron, 
and contains a great many devices originated by 
the young engineer, and sanctioned by his father. 
It was he also who first, in recent times, leaxned 
how to transport masses of stone of twenty-five tons 
weight, used for the foundation of bridges. 

Having thus become an accomplished engineer, 
his wise old father sent him on a long tour, which 
lasted more than two years, in the course of which 
he inspected all the great works, both of the an- 



376 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

cients and moderns, in Europe, and the more acces- 
sible parts of Africa and Asia. Returning home, 
the death of his father suddenly placed upon his 
shoulders the most extensive and difficult engineer- 
ing business in Great Britain. But with such a 
training, under such a father, and inheriting so 
many traditional methods, he proved equal to the 
position, continued the great works begun by his 
father, and carried them on to successful comple- 
tion. 

His father had already convinced the govern- 
ment that the old London Bridge could never be 
made sufficient for the traffic, or unobstructive to 
the navigation. A bridge has existed at this spot 
since the year 928, and some of the timbers of the 
original structure were still sound in 1824, when 
work upon the new bridge was begun. 

Thirty firms competed for the contract for build- 
ing the new London Bridge, but it was awarded to 
the Kennies, under whose superintendence it was 
built. The bridge is nine hundred and twenty-eight 
feet in length, and has five arches. In this structure 
although utility was the first consideration, there in 
an elegant solidity of design which makes it pleas- 
ing and impressive in the highest degree. The 
rapid stream is as little obstructed as the circum. 
stances admitted, and there does not appear to be 
in the bridge an atom of superfluous material. 
London Bridge is, I suppose, the most crowded 
thoroughfare in the world. Twenty-five thousand 



SIR JOHN RENNIE. 377 

vehicles cross it daily, as well as countlesss multi- 
tudes of foot-passengers. So great is the throng, 
that there is a project now on foot to widen it. In 
1831, when it was formally opened by King Wil- 
liam lY., the great engineer was knighted, and he 
was in consequence ever after called Sir John Ren- 
nie. 

During the period of railroad building, Sir John 
Rennie constructed a great many remarkable works, 
particularly in Portugal and Sweden. We have 
lately heard much of the disappointment of young 
engineers whom the cessation in the construction of 
railroads has thrown out of business. Perhaps no 
profession suffered more from the dull times than 
this. Sir John Eennie explains the matter in his 
autobiography : — 

" In 1844," he teUs us, " the demand for engi- 
neering surveyors and assistants was very great. 
Engineering was considered to be the only profes- 
sion where immense wealth and fame were to be 
acquired, and consequently everybody became engi- 
neers. It was not the question whether they were 
educated for it, or competent to undertake it, but 
simply whether any person chose to dub himself 
engineer ; hence lawyers' clerks, surgeons' appren- 
tices, merchants, tradesmen, officers in the army 
and navy, private gentlemen, left their professions 
and became engineers. The consequence was that 
innumerable blunders were made and vast sums of 
money were recklessly expended." 



378 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

It was mucli the same in the United States ; and 
hence a good many of these gentlemen have been 
obliged to find their way back to the homelier oc- 
cupations which they rashly abandoned. But in 
our modern world a thoroughly trained engineer, 
like Sir John Eennie, will always be in request ; 
for man's conquest of the earth is still most incom- 
plete ; and I do not doubt that the next century will 
far outdo this in the magnitude of its engineer- 
ing works, and in the external changes wrought by 
the happy union of theory and practice in such men 
as Telford, Stephenson, and Eennie. 

Sir John Rennie spent the last years of his life 
in writing his Memoirs, a most interesting and 
useful work, recently published in London, which, 
I hope, will be republished here. It is just the 
book for a young fellow who has an ambition to 
gain honor by serving mankind in a skillful and 
manly way. Sir John Rennie, like his father be- 
fore him, and like all other great masters of men, 
was constantly attentive to the interests and feel- 
ings of those who assisted him. He was a wise and 
considerate employer ; and the consequence was, 
that he was generally served with loyal and afPec- 
tionate fidelity. He died in 1874, aged eighty 
years» 



SIR MOSES MONTEFIORE. 



"We still deal strangely with the Jews. While 
at one end of Europe an Israelite scarcely dares 
show himself in the streets for fear of being stoned 
and abused, in other countries of the same conti- 
nent we see them prime ministers, popular authors, 
favorite composers of music, capitalists, philanthro- 
pists, to whom whole nations pay homage. 

Sir Moses Montefiore, though an English bar- 
onet, is an Israelite of the Israelites, connected by 
marriage and business with the Rothschilds, and a 
sharer in their wonderful accumulations of money. 
His hundredth birthday was celebrated in 1883 at 
his country-house on the English coast, and cele- 
brated in such a way as to make the festival one of 
the most interesting events of the year. The Eng- 
lish papers tell us that nearly a himdred telegrams 
of congratulation and benediction reached the aged 
man in the course of the day, from America, Af- 
rica, Asia, and all parts of Europe, from Chris- 
tians, Jews, Mahomedans, and men of the world. 
The telegraph offices, we are told, were clogged 
during the morning with these messages, some of 



880 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

which were of great length, in foreign languages 
and in strange alphabets, such as the Arabic and 
Hebrew. Friends in England sent him addresses 
in the English manner, several of which were 
beautifully written upon parchment and superbly 
mounted. The railroad passing near his house 
conveyed to him by every train during the day 
presents of rare fruit and beautiful flowers. The 
Jews in Spain and Portugal forwarded presents of 
the cakes prepared by orthodox Jews for the relig- 
ious festival which occurred on his birthday. In- 
deed, there has seldom been in Europe such a 
widespread and cordial recognition of the birth- 
day of any private citizen. 

Doubtless, the remarkable longevity of Sir 
Moses had something to do with emphasizing the 
celebration. Great wealth, too, attracts 'the regard 
of mankind. But there are many rich old Jews in 
the world whose birthday excites no enthusiasm. 
The briefest review of the long life of Sir Moses 
Montefiore will sufficiently explain the almost imi- 
versal recognition of the recent anniversary. 

He was born as long ago as 1784, the second 
year of American independence, when William Pitt 
was prime minister of England. He was five years 
old when the Bastille was stormed, and thirty- 
one when the battle of Waterloo was fought. He 
was in middle life before England had become 
wise enough to make Jew and Christian equal be- 
fore the law, and thus attract to her shores one of 



SIR AIOSES MONTEFIORE. 381 

the most gifted and one of the most virtuous of 
races. 

The father of Sir Moses lived and died in one 
of the narrow old streets near the centre of London 
called Philpot Lane, where he became the father 
of an old-fashioned family of seventeen children. 
This prolific parent was a man of no great wealth, 
and consequently his eldest son, Moses, left school 
at an early age, and was apprenticed to a London 
firm of provision dealers. He was a singularly 
handsome young man, of agreeable manners and 
most engaging disposition, circumstances which led 
to his entering the Stock Exchange. This was at 
a time when only twelve Jewish brokers were al- 
lowed to carry on business in London, and he was 
one of the twelve. 

At the age of twenty-eight he had fully entered 
upon his career, a broker and a married man, his 
wife the daughter of Levy Cohen, a rich and 
highly cultivated Jewish merchant. His wife's 
sister had married N. M. Rothschild, and one of 
his brothers married Eothsehild's sister. United 
thus by marriage to the great banker, he became 
also his partner in business, and this at a time 
when the gains of the Rothschilds were greatest 
and most rapid. 

Most readers remember how the Rothschilds 
made their prodigious profits during the last years 
of Bonaparte's reign. They had a pigeon express 
at Dover, by means of which they obtained the 



382 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

first correct news from the continent. During the 
" Hundred Days," for example, such a panic pre- 
vailed in England that government bonds were 
greatly depressed. The first rumors from Water- 
loo were of defeat and disaster, which again re- 
duced consols to a panic price. The Rothschilds, 
notified of the victory a few hours sooner than 
the government itself, bought largely of securities 
which, in twenty-four hours, almost doubled in 
value. Moses Montefiore, sharing in these trans- 
actions, found himself at forty-five a millionaire. 

Instead of slaving away in business to the end 
of his life, adding million to million, with the risk 
of losing all at last, he took the wise resolution of 
retiring from business and devoting the rest of his 
life to works of philanthropy. 

When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 
1837, Moses Montefiore was sheriff of London. 
The queen had lived near his country-house, and 
had often as a little girl strolled about his park. 
She now enjoyed the satisfaction of conferring 
upon her neighbor the honor of knighthood, and a 
few years later she made him a baronet. Thus he 
became Sir Moses, which has an odd sound to us, 
but which in England seems natural enough. 

During the last fifty years Sir Moses has been, 
as it were, a professional philanthropist. Every 
good cause has shared his bounty, but he has been 
most generous to poor members of his own race 
and religion. He has visited seven times the Holy 



SIR MOSES MONTEFIORE. 383 

Land, where the Jews have been for ages impover- 
ished and degraded. He has directed his particu- 
lar attention to improving the agriculture of Pales- 
tine, once so fertile and productive, and inducing 
the Jews to return to the cultivation of the soil. 
In that country he himseK caused to be planted an 
immense garden, in which there are nine hundred 
fruit trees, made productive by irrigation. He 
has promoted the system of irrigation by building 
aqueducts, digging wells, and providing improved 
apparatus. He has also endowed hospitals and 
almshouses in that country. 

In whatever part of the world, during the last 
fifty years, the Jews have been persecuted or dis- 
tressed, he has put forth the most efficient exer- 
tions for their relief, often going himself to distant 
countries to convey the requisite assistance. When 
he was ninety-one years of age he went to Palestine 
upon an errand of benevolence. He has pleaded 
the cause of his persecuted brethren before the 
Emperor of Russia, and pleaded it with success. 
To all that part of the world known to us chiefly 
through the Jews he has been a constant and most 
munificent benefactor during the last half century, 
while never turning a deaf ear to the cry of want 
nearer home. 

In October he completes his hundredth year. 
At present (January, 1884), he reads without spec- 
tacles, hears well, stands nearly erect, although six 
feet three in height, and has nothing of the somno- 



384 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

lence of old age. He drives out every day, gets up 
at eleven, and goes to bed at nine. His diet is 
chiefly milk and old port wine, with occasionally 
a little soup or bread and butter. He still enjoys 
the delights of beneficence, which are among the 
keenest known to mortals, and pleases himself this 
year by giving checks of ninety-nine pounds to be- 
nevolent objects, a pound for each year that he has 
had the happiness of living. 



MAEQUIS OF WORCESTER, 

INVENTOR OF THE STEAM-ENGINE. 



In the English county of Monmouthshire, near 
Wales, a region of coal mines and iron works, there 
are the ruins of Raglan Castle, about a mile from 
a village of the same name. To these ruins let 
pilgrims repair who delight to visit places where 
great things began ; for here once dwelt the Mar- 
quis of Worcester, who first made steam work for 
men. The same family still owns the site; as in- 
deed it does the greater part of the county ; the 
head of the family being now styled the Duke of 
Beaufort. The late Lord Raglan, commander of 
the English forces in the Crimea, belonged to this 
house, and showed excellent taste in selecting for 
his title a name so interesting. Perhaps, however, 
he never thought of the old tower of Raglan Castle, 
which is still marked and indented where the sec- 
ond Marquis of Worcester set up his steam-engine 
two hundred and twenty years ago. Very likely he 
had in mind the time when the first marquis held 
the castle for Charles I. against the Roundheads, 
and baffled them for two months, though he was 



386 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

then eighty-five years of age. It was the son of 
that valiant and tough old warrior who put steam 
into harness, and defaced his ancestral tower with 
a ponderous and imperfect engine. 

For many centuries before his time something 
had been known of the power of steam ; and the 
Egyptians, a century or more before Christ, had 
even made certain steam toys, which we find de- 
scribed in a manuscript written about 120 B. c, 
at Alexandria, by a learned compiler and inventor 
named Hero. One of these was in the form of a 
man pouring from a cup a libation to the gods. 
The figure stood upon an altar, and it was con- 
nected by a pipe with a kettle of water underneath. 
On lighting a fire under the kettle, the water was 
forced up through the figure, and flowed out of the 
cup upon the altar. Another toy was a revolving 
copper globe, which was kept in motion by the es- 
cape of steam from two little pipes bent in the 
same direction. Of this contrivance the French 
Professor Arago once wrote : — 

" This was, beyond doubt, a machine in which 
steam engendered motion, and could . produce me- 
chanical effects. It was a veritable steam-engine f 
Let us hasten, however, to add that it bears no re- 
semblance, either by its form or in mode of action, 
to steam-engines now in use." 

Other steam devices are described by Hero. By 
one a horn was blown, and by another figures were 
made to dance upon an altar. But there is no 



MARQUIS OF WORCESTER. 387 

trace in the ancient world of the appKcation of 
steam to an important useful purpose. Professor 
Thurston of Hoboken, in his excellent work upon 
the " History of the Steam-Engine," has gleaned 
from the literature of the last seven hundred years 
several interesting allusions to the nature and 
power of steam. In 1125 there was, it appears, at 
Eheims in France, some sort of contrivance for 
blowing a church organ by the aid of steam. There 
is an allusion, also, in a French sermon of 1571, to 
the awful power in volcanic eruptions of a small 
quantity of confined steam. There are traces of 
steam being made to turn a spit upon which meat 
was roasted. An early French writer mentions the 
experiment of exploding a bomb-shell nearly filled 
with water by putting it into a fire. In 1630 King 
Charles the First of England granted to David 
Eamseye a patent for nine different contrivances, 
among which were the following : — 

" To raise water from low pits by fire. To make 
any sort of mills to go on standing waters by contin- 
ual motion without help of wind, water, or horse. 
To make boats, ships, and barges to go against 
strong wind and tide. To raise water from mines 
and coal pits by a way never yet in use." 

This was in 1630, which was about the date of 
the Marquis of Worcester's engine. It is possible, 
however, that these devices existed only in the im- 
agination of the inventor. The marquis was then 
twenty-nine years of age, and as he was curious in 



888 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

matters of science, it is highly probable that he was 
acquainted with this patent, and may have con- 
versed with the inventor. 

It is strange how little we know of a man so im- 
portant as the Marquis of Worcester in our mod- 
ern industrial development. I believe that not one 
of the histories of England mentions him, and 
scarcely anything is known of the circumstances 
that led to his experimenting with steam. Living 
in a county of coal and iron mines, and his own 
property consisting very much in coal lands, his at- 
tention must of necessity have been called to the 
difficulties experienced by the miners in pumping 
the water from the deep mines. There were mines 
which employed as many as five hundred horses in 
pumping out the water, and it was a thing of fre- 
quent occurrence for a productive mine to be aban- 
doned because the whole revenue was absorbed in 
clearing it of water. This inventor was perhaps 
the man in England who had the greatest interest 
in the contrivance 'to which in early life he turned 
his mind. 

He was bom in the year 1601, and sprung from 
a family whose title of nobility dated back to the 
fourteenth century. He is described by his Eng- 
lish biographer as a learned, thoughtful, and stu- 
dious Koman Catholic ; as public - spirited and 
humane; as a mechanic, patient, skiUful, full of 
resources, and quick to comprehend. He inherited 
a great estate, not perhaps so very productive in 



MARQUIS OF WORCESTER. 389 

money, but of enormous intrinsic value. There is 
reason to believe that he began to exj)eriment with 
steam soon after he came of age. He describes 
one of his experiments, probably of early date : — 

" I have taken a piece of a whole cannon, 
whereof the end was burst, and filled it with water 
three quarters full, stopping and screwing up the 
broken end, as also the touch-hole, and making a 
constant fire under it. Within twenty-four hours 
it burst, and made a great crack." 

That the engine which he constructed was de- 
signed to pump water is shown by the very name 
which he gave it, — " the water-commanding en- 
gine," — and, indeed, it was never used for any 
other purpose. The plan of it was very simple, 
and, without improvements, it could have answered 
its purposes but imperfectly. It consisted of two 
vessels from which the air was driven alternately 
by the condensation of steam within them, and into 
the vacuum thus created the water rushed from 
the bottom of the mine. He probably had his first 
machine erected before 1630, when he was still a 
young man, and he spent his life in endeavors to 
bring his invention into use. In doing this he 
expended so large a portion of his fortune, and ex- 
cited so much ridicule, that he died comparatively 
poor and friendless. I think it probable, however, 
that his poverty was due rather to the civil wars, 
in which his heroic old father and himself were so 
unfortunate as to be on the losing side. He at- 



390 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

tempted to form a company for the introduction of 
his machine, and when he died without having suc- 
ceeded in this, his widow still persisted in the same 
object, though without success. He did, however, 
make several steam-engines besides the one at Rag- 
lan Castle ; engines which did actually answer the 
purpose of raising water from considerable depths 
in a continuous stream. He also erected near 
London a steam fountain, which he describes. 

During the next century several important im- 
provements were made in the steam-engine, but 
without rendering it anything like the useful agent 
which we now possess. When James Watt began 
to experiment, about the year 1760, in his little 
shop near the Glasgow University, the steam-engine 
was still used only for pumping water, and he soon 
discovered that it wasted three fourths of the steam. 
He once related to a friend how the idea of his 
great improvement, that of saving the waste by a 
condenser, occurred to his mind. He was then a 
poor mechanic living upon fourteen shillings a 
week. 

" I had gone to take a walk," he said, " on a fine 
Sabbath afternoon. I had entered the Green by 
the gate at the foot of Charlotte Street, and had 
passed the old washing-house. I was thinking upon 
the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the 
herd's house, when the idea came into my mind 
that, as steam was an elastic body, it would rush 
into a vacuum, and, if a commimication were made 



MARQUIS OF WORCESTER. 391 

between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel, it 
would rush into it, and might be there condensed 
without cooling the cylinder." 

He had found it ! Before he had crossed the 
Green, he added, " the whole thing was arranged 
in my mind." Since that memorable day the in- 
vention has been ever growing ; for, as Professor 
Thurston well remarks : " Great inventions are 
never the work of any one mind." From Hero to 
Corliss is a stretch of nearly twenty centuries ; dur- 
ing which, probably, a thousand inventive minds 
have contributed to make the steam-engine the ex= 
quisite thing it is to-day. 



AN OLD DEY-GOODS MERCHANT'S 
EECOLLECTIONS. 



Our great cities liave a new wonder of late 
years. I mean those immense dry-goods stores 
which we see in Paris, London, New York, Vienna, 
Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago, in which are displayed 
under one roof almost all the things worn, or used 
for domestic purposes, by man, woman, or child. 

What a splendid and cheering spectacle the in- 
terior presents on a fine, bright day ! The count- 
ers a tossing sea of brilliant fabrics ; crowds of 
ladies moving in all directions; the clerks, well- 
dressed and polite, exhibiting their goods ; the 
cash-boys flying about with money in one hand and 
a bundle in the other ; customers streaming in at 
every door ; and customers passing out,, with the sat- 
isfied air of people who have got what they want. 
It gives the visitor a cheerful idea of abundance to 
see such a provision of comfortable and pleasant 
things brought from every quarter of the globe. 

An old dry-goods merchant of London, now 
nearly ninety, and long ago retired from business 
with a large fortune, has given his recollections of 



AN OLD MERCHANT'S RECOLLECTIONS. 393 

business in the good old times. There is a period- 
ical, called the " Draper's Magazine," devoted to 
the dry-goods business, and it is in this that some 
months ago he told his story. 

When he was a few months past thirteen, being 
stout and large for his age, he was placed in a Lon- 
don dry-goods store, as boy of all work. No wages 
were given him. At that time the clerks in stores 
usually boarded with their employer. On the first 
night of his service, when it was time to go to bed, 
he was shown a low, truckle bedstead, under the 
counter, made to pull out and push in. He did 
not have even this poor bed to himself, but shared 
it with another boy in the store. On getting up in 
the morning, instead of washing and dressing for 
the day, he was obliged to put on some old clothes, 
take down the shutters of the store, — which were 
so heavy he could hardly carry them, — then clean 
the brass signs and the outside of the shop win- 
dows, leaving the inside to be washed by the older 
clerks. When he had done this, he was allowed 
to go up stairs, wash himself, dress for the day, 
and to eat his breakfast. Then he took his place 
behind the counter. 

We think it wrong for boys under fourteen to 
work ten hours a day. But in the stores of the 
olden time, both boys and men worked from four- 
teen to sixteen hours a day, and nothing was 
thought of it. This store, for example, was opened 
soon after eight in the morning, and the shutters 



394 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

were not put up till ten in the evening. There 
was much work to do after the store was closed ; 
and the young men, in fact, were usually released 
from labor about a quarter past eleven. On Sat- 
urday nights the store closed at twelve o'clock, and 
it was not uncommon for the young men to be em- 
ployed in putting away the goods until between 
two and three on Sunday morning. 

" There used to be," the old gentleman records, 
" a supper of hot beaf steaks and onions, and por- 
ter, which we boys used to relish immensely, and 
eat and drink a good deal more of both than was 
good for us." 

After such a week's work one would think the 
clerks would have required rest on Sunday. But 
they did not get much. The store was open from 
eight until church time, which was then eleven 
o'clock ; and this was one of the most profitable 
mornings of the week. The old gentleman ex- 
plains why it was so. Almost all factories, shops, 
and stores were then kept open very late, and the 
last thing done in them was to pay wages, which 
was seldom accomplished until after midnight. 
Hence the apparent necessity for the Sunday morn- 
ing's business. 

Another great evil mentioned by our chronicler 
grew out of this bad system of all work and no 
play. The clerks, released from business towards 
midnight, were accustomed to go to a tavern and 
spend part of the night in drinking and carousing j 



AN OLD MERCHANT'S RECOLLECTIONS. 395 

reeling home at a late hour, much the worse for 
drink, and unfit for business in the morning until 
they had taken another glass. All day the clerks 
were in the habit of slipping out without their hats 
to the nearest tap-room for beer. 

Nor was the system very different in New York. 
An aged book-keeper, to whom I gave an outline of 
the old gentleman's narrative, informs me that forty 
years ago the clerks, as a rule, were detained tiU 
very late in the evening, and often went from the 
store straight to a drinking-house. 

Now let us see how it fared with the public who 
depended upon these stores for their dry-goods. 
From our old gentleman's account it would seem 
that every transaction was a sort of battle between 
the buyer and seller to see which should cheat the 
other. On the first day of his attendance he wit- 
nessed a specimen of the mode in which a dexter- 
ous clerk could sell an article to a lady which she 
did not want. An unskillful clerk had displayed 
too suddenly the entire stock of the goods of which 
she was in search; upon which she rose to leave, 
saying that there was nothing she Uked. A more 
experienced salesman then stepped up. 

" Walk this way, madam, if you please, and I 
will show you something entirely different, with 
which I am sure you will be quite delighted." 

He took her to the other end of the store, and 
then going back to the pile which she had just 
rejected, snatched up several pieces, and sold her 



396 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

one of them almost immediately. Customers, the 
old merchant says, were often bullied into buying 
things they did not want. 

" Many a haK - frightened girl," he remarks, 
" have I seen go out of the shop, the tears welling 
up into her eyes, and saying, 'I am sure I shall 
never like it : ' some shawl or dress having been 
forced upon her contrary to her taste or judgment." 

The new clerk, although by nature a very honest 
young fellow, soon became expert in all the tricks 
of the trade. It was the custom then for employ- 
ers to allow clerks a reward for selling things that 
were particularly unsalable, or which required some 
special skill or impudence in the seller. For ex- 
ample, they kept on hand a great supply of what 
they were pleased to caU '* remnants," which were 
supposed to be sold very cheap ; and as the public 
of that day had a passion for remnants, the master 
of the shop took care to have them made in suffi- 
cient numbers. There were heaps of remnants of 
linen, and it so happened that the remnants were 
exactly long enough for a shirt, or some other gar- 
ment. Any clerk who could push off one of these 
remnants upon a customer was allowed a penny or 
twopence as a reward for his talent ; and there 
were certain costly articles, such as shawls and 
silks of unsalable patterns, upon which there was a 
premium of several shillings for selling. 

There was one frightfully ugly shawl which had 
hung fire so long that the master of the shop of- 



AN OLD MERCHANT'S RECOLLECTIONS. 397 

fered a reward of eight shillings (two dollars) to 
any one who should sell it at the full price, which 
was twenty dollars. Our lad covered himself with 
glory one morning, by selling this horrid old thing. 
A sailor came in to buy a satin scarf for a present. 
The boy saw Ms chance. 

" As you want something for a present," said he 
to the sailor, "would you not like to give some- 
thing really useful and valuable that would last 
for years ? " 

In three minutes the sailor was walking out of 
the store, happy enough, with the shawl under his 
arm, and the sharp youth was depositing the price 
thereof in the money-drawer. Very soon he had 
an opportunity of assisting to gull the public on a 
great scale. His employer bought out the stock of 
an old-fashioned dry-goods store in another part of 
the town for a small sum ; upon which he deter- 
mined to have a grand " selling off." To this end 
he filled the old shop with all his old, faded, un- 
salable goods, besides looking around among the 
wholesale houses and picking up several cart-loads 
of cheap lots, more or less damaged. 

The whole town was flooded with biUs announc- 
ing this selling off of the old established store, at 
which many goods could be obtained at less than 
half the original cost. As this was then a com- 
paratively new trick the public were deceived by it, 
and it had the most astonishing success. The sell- 
ing off lasted several weeks, the supply of goods 
being kept up by daily purchases. 



398 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 

Our junior clerk was an apt learner in deception 
and trickery. Shortly after this experiment upon 
tlie public credulity, a careless boy lighting the 
lamps in the window (for this was before the in- 
troduction of gas) set some netting on fire, causing 
a damage of a few shillings, the fire being almost 
instantly extinguished. As business had been a 
little dull, the junior clerk conceived the idea of 
turning the conflagration to account. Going up 
to his employer, and pointing to the singed articles, 
he said to him : — 

" Why not have a selling off here, and clear out 
all the stock damaged by fire ? " 

The master laughed at the enormity of the joke, 
but instantly adopted the suggestion, and in the 
course of a day or two, flaming posters announced 
the awful disaster and the sale. In preparing for 
this event, the clerks applied lighted paper to the 
edges of whole stacks of goods, slightly discolored 
the tops of stockings, and in fact, they singed to 
such an extent as almost to cause a real conflagra- 
tion. During these night operations a great deal 
of beer was consumed, and the whole effect of the 
manoeuvre was injurious and demoralizing to every 
clerk in the store. 

This sale also was ridiculously successful. A 
mob surrounded the doors before they were opened, 
and to keep up the excitement some low-priced 
goods were ostentatiously sold much below cost. 
Such was the rush of customers that at noon the 



AN OLD MERCHANT'S RECOLLECTIONS. 399 

young men were exhausted by the labor of selling ; 
the counters were a mere litter of tumbled dry- 
goods ; and the shop had to be closed for a while 
for rest and putting things in order. To keep up 
the excitement, the master and his favorite junior 
clerk rode about London in hackney coaches, in 
search of any cheap lots that would answer their 
purpose. 

In the course of time, this clerk, who was at heart 
an honest, well-principled fellow, grew ashamed of 
all this trickery and fraud, and when at length 
he set up in business for himself, he adopted the 
principle of *•' one price and no abatement." He 
dealt honorably with all his customers, and thus 
founded one of the great dry-goods houses of Lon- 
don. 

Two things saved him : first, he loathed drinking 
and debauchery ; secondly, he was in the habit of 
reading. 

The building up of the huge establishments, to 
which some persons object, has nearly put an end 
to the old system of guzzling, cheating, and lying. 
The clerks in these great stores go to business at 
eight o'clock in the morning, and leave at six in the 
evening, with an interval for dinner. They work 
all day in a clean and pleasant place, and they are 
neither required or allowed to lie or cheat. Avery 
large establishment must be conducted honestly, or 
it cannot long go on. Its very largeness 
an adherence to truth and fact. 



The Riverside School Library. 

Under this general name are published, in firm and 
attractive style, yet at moderate prices, a series of vol- 
umes peculiarly suited for School Libraries. They are 
chosen largely from the best literature which has stood 
the test of the world's judgment, and yet is as fresh and 
inviting to-day as when first published. 

In the selection of the volumes comprising this Library 
the publishers have been assisted by more than one hun- 
dred of the best educators of American youth. 

The volumes are edited with great care, and contain 
portraits and biographical sketches of the authors ; also 
notes and glossaries wherever needed. They are thor- 
oughly well printed, and bound substantially in dark red 
half leather, with cloth sides. In every respect they com- 
mend themselves to all who wish that pupils may have the 
best, most interesting, and most salutary reading. 

It is hoped that the reading of these books will pro- 
mote a love for good literature, and prevent or correct the 
taste for reading the trashy and unwholesome stories that 
constantly tempt the young. 

It is believed that the use of this series will give a 
strong impetus to the movement for supplying schools 
with thoroughly good libraries, which must be regarded 
as among the most potent instrumentalities for the pro- 
motion of good citizenship, and the development of intel- 
ligence, refinement, and high character among the boys 
and girls so fortunate as to enjoy their influence. 



A SERIES OF BOOKS OF PERMANENT VALUE 
CAREFULLY CHOSEN, THOROUGHLY ED- 
ITED, CLEARLY PRINTED, DURABLY 
BOUND IN HALF LEATHER 
AND SOLD AT LOW 
PRICES 

PREPARED WITH SPECIAL REGARD 
FOR AMERICAN SCHOOLS 

*.3i* All the books named are i6mo in size, except when otherwise indicated. 

For a full alphabetical list of the aiitho>'s whose hooks are iiuliided 

in this series, see the last page of this catalogue. 



Andersen, Hans Christian, Stories by. With a Por- 
trait. 207 pp., 50 cents. 

All of Andersen's short stories would require two large vol- 
umes, but he was an unequal writer, and the collection here 
given contains his best known and most attractive stories. 
The translator has followed carefully the very simple style of 
Andersen, so that the book can be read by any one who has 
mastered the second reader, and by some who have mastered 
the first. Andersen has been called the first child who has 
contributed to literature, so thoroughly does he understand a 
child's imagination. The Preface gives a pleasant glimpse of 
the man. 

Arabian Nights, Tales from the. In preparation. 
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, The. By Oliver 
Wendell Holmes. With Biographical Sketch and 
Portrait. 345 pp., 60 cents. 

Dr. Holmes lived to see The Autocrat read by the grand- 
I 



children of those who read it when it first appeared, and age 
does not diminish the charms of the juiciest book in American 
literature. It is like overhearing the witty talk of a brilliant 
conversationalist to read this book, and the imaginary charac- 
ters who listen to the Autocrat and occasionally put in a word 
come to be as well known to readers as many more loquacious 
persons. A sketch gives the outline of the author's career. 
Being a Boy. By Charles Dudley Warner. With 

Biographical Sketch, Portrait, and other Illustrations. 

254 pp., 60 cents. 

Mr. Warner tells in a playful way not merely a story of his 
own boyhood, but the story of country New England life nearly 
half a century ago. 
Birds and Bees, and Other Studies in Nature. By 

John Burroughs. With Biographical Sketch, Portrait, 

and Notes. 288 pp., 60 cents. 

John Burroughs has taken his place as one of the most de- 
lightful writers in America on subjects connected with nature. 
His observation is close, and his manner is most friendly as 
he discourses of birds, bees,' trees, berries, herbs, landscapes, 
flowers. 
Bird - Ways. By Olive Thorne Miller. With 

Sketch and Portrait of the Author. 236 pp., 60 cents. 

In fourteen sketches of the American Robin, Wood Thrush, 
European Song Thrush, Cat-bird, Redwing Black-bird, Balti- 
more Oriole, and House Sparrow, Mrs. Miller gives the habits 
and ways of birds that she has herself watched. The special 
value of her studies is in their consideration of particular birds. 
Captains of Industry. By James Parton. In two 

series. Each 400 pp., 60 cents. 

In these two volumes are contained ninety-four brief, pungent 
biographies, most of them relating to men of business who did 
something, as Mr. I^arton says, besides making money. Some 
of the sketches are of striking characters, of whom no extended 
biographies have been written, Mr. Parton having obtained 
his information at first hand. In all the author gets at the 
pith of the subject. 

Child Life in Poetry and Child Life in Prose, Selec- 
tions from. Edited by John Greenleaf Whittier. 

396 pp., 50 cents. 

Mr. Whittier, aided by Miss Larcom, made two considerable 
2 



collections of poetry and prose, from the writings of well- 
known authors. The present volume contains the choicest 
of these selections, with a view to meeting the needs of the 
younger readers. 

Children's Hour, The, and Other Poems. By 

Henry VVadsworth Longfellow. With Biographi- 
cal Sketch, Notes, Portrait, and Illustrations. 264 pp. 
60 cents. 

In this volume are gathered the most popular of Long- 
fellow's shorter poems, beginning with those most familiar and 
easy and proceeding to the more scholarly. It is a wide range 
which takes in The Cliildren's Hour, Paul Revere's Ride, and 
The Building of the Ship. 

Christmas Carol in Prose, A, and The Cricket on 
the Hearth. By Charles Dickens. With a Sketch 
of the Life of Dickens, a Portrait, and three Illustra- 
tions. 230 pp., 50 cents. 
These two stories are the most famous and delightful of the 

celebrated Christmas books by Dickens, which fifty years ago 

made a new form in English Literature. 

Enoch Arden, The Coming of Arthur, and Other 

Poems. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson. With Intro- 
ductions, Notes, and a Portrait. 223 pp., 50 cents. 
Lord Tennyson's story of Enoch Arden has struck deep into 
the heart of a generation of readers, and the poems which are 
grouped with it include four of the famous Idylls of the King. 

Essays and Poems. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 
preparation. 

Evangeline, Hiawatha, and the Courtship of Miles 
Standish. With a Sketch of the Life and Writings of 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Longfellow at Home" 
by Alice M. Longfellow, Explanatory Notes, Portrait, 
Map, and Illustrations. 396 pp., 60 cents. 
The two long narrative poems by which the poet is best 

known brought together in a single volume, and fully equipped 

with the needful history of the poet and his works, and such 

aids as the interested reader desires. 

Fables and Folk Stories. By Horace E. Scudder. 
With Frontispiece Illustration. 200 pp., 50 cents. 
3 



The most familiar fables, chiefly from ^sop, and the most 
famous folk stories, such as Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, 
Little Red Riding Hood, Tom Thumb, Dick Whittington and 
his Cat, Puss in Boots, Jack and the Bean Stalk, told over 
again in language simple enough for those who are reading in 
the second reader. Millais's Cinderella furnishes the frontis- 
piece. 

Franklin's Autobiography. With a Sketch of his 

Life from the point where the Autobiography closes. 

Witli three Illustrations, a Map, and a Chronological 

Table. 260 pp., 50 cents. 

Benjamin Franklin wrote many letters and scientific treatises, 
but his Autobiography will outlive them all, for it will continue 
to be read with delight by all Americans, when his other writ- 
ings are read only by students of history or science. It is one 
of the world's great books, in which a great man tells simply 
and easily the story of his own life. Franklin brought the 
story down to his fiftieth year. The remainder is told chiefly 
through his letters. A chronological table gives a survey of 
the events in liis life and the great historical events occurring 
in his lifetime. An introductorv note gives the history of this 
famous book. 

German Household Tales. By the* Brothers Grimm. 
/// preparation. 

Grandfather's Chair, or. True Stories from New 
England History ; and Biographical Stories. By 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. With a Biographical Sketch 
and Portrait, Notes and Illustrations. pp., 60 cents. 

This is one of the most delightful books for beginners in 
history in our literature. The great romancer never was so 
happy as when he was writing for the young, and the book 
has been enriched by many pictures and a map. In addition 
also to Grandfather's Chair, tlie volume contains half a dozen 
biographical stories by Hawthorne in the same vein. 

Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle, and 
Other Verse and Prose. By Oliver Wendell 
Holmes. 190 pp.. Portrait, 50 cents. 
The spirited ballads and humorous poems of Dr. Holmes, 

together with his animated narrative of My Hunt after the 

Captain, and other prose papers. 
4 



Gulliver's Travels. The Voyage to Lilliput and Brob- 

dingnag. By Jonathan Swift. With Introductory 

Sketch, Notes, Portrait, and two Maps. 193 pp., 50 cents. 

These famous Voyages give one the entertainment caused 
by looking first through one end, then through the other, of a 
spy-glass, and the glass is always turned on men and women, 
so that we see them first as pygmies, and afterward as giants. 
The Introductory Sketch gives an account of Dean Swift and 
his writings, and there are two curiously fanciful maps copied 
from an early edition. 
Holland, Brave Little, and What She Taught Us. 

By William Elliot Griffis. With a Map and four 

Illustrations. 266 pp., 60 cents. 

A rapid survey of the development of Holland with special 
reference to the part which the country has played in the 
struggle for constitutional liberty and to the association of 
Holland with the United States of America. 
House of the Seven Gables, The. By Nathaniel 

Hawthorne. With Introductory Sketch, Picture of 

Hawthorne's Birthplace, and Portrait. i2mo. 384 pp., 

70 cents. 

This romance is instinct with the feeling for old Salem, and 
it embodies some of Hawthorne's most graceful fancies, as in 
the chapter entitled The Pyncheon Garden. The Introduc- 
tory Sketch gives an outline of Hawthorne's career. 

Ivanhoe. By Sir Walter Scott. With a Biographical 

Sketch and Notes, a Portrait and other Illustrations. 

i2mo. 529 pp., 70 cents. 

One of the great Waverley novels. It is hard to say which 
is the most popular of Scott's novels. Every reader has his 
favorite, but the fact that Ivanhoe has been selected As a book 
to be read by students preparing for college shows the estimate 
in which it is held by teachei^s. 
Japanese Interior, A. By Alice Bacon. 228 pp., 

60 cents. 

Miss Bacon was for some dme an American teacher in a 
school in Japan to which daughters of the nobility were sent. 
Her own life and her acquaintance gave her exceptional oppor- 
tunities for seeing the inside of houses and the private life of 
the Japanese, and in this volume she gives a clear account of 
her observation and experience. 
5 



Lady of the Lake, The. By Sir Walter Scott. 
With a Sketch of Scott's hfe, and thirty-three Illustra- 
tions. 275 pp., 60 cents. 

This poem by Scott is almost always the first one to be 
read when Scott is taken up, and the picturesqueness, move- 
ment and melody of the verse make it one of the last to fade 
from the memory. A sketch of the poet's life takes special 
cognizance of the poetic side of his nature, and many of the 
illustrations are careful stories from the scenes of the poem. 

Last of the Mohicans, The. By James Fenimore 
Cooper. With an Introduction by Susan Fenimore 
Cooper, Biographical Sketch, Notes, Portrait, and two 
other Illustrations. i2mo. 471 pp., 70 cents. 
This is one of the most popular of Cooper's Leather-Stock- 
ing Tales. The scene is laid during the French and Indian 
war, and the story contains those portraitures of Indians and 
hunters which have fixed in the minds of men the characteris- 
tics of these figures. A biographical sketch introduces Cooper 
to the reader, and Miss Susan Fenimore Cooper, daughter of 
the novelist, gives an interesting account of the growth of this 
story. 

Lilliput and Brobdingnag, The Voyage to. See 

Gulliver's Travels. 

Milton's Minor Poems and Three Books of Para- 
dise Lost. With Biographical Sketch, Introductions, 
Notes, and Portrait. 206 pp., 50 cents. 
The great poems by which John Milton is known, L'Allegro, 
II Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and a selection of sonnets, are 
followed by the first three books of his epic. The introductions 
and notes offer aids to a clear interpretation and true enjoy- 
ment of the author. 

New England Girlhood, A, Outlined from Memory. 
By Lucy Larcom. With Introductory Sketch and Por- 
trait. 274 pp., 60 cents. 

Miss Larcom has here told the story of her early life, when 
as a country girl she entered the mills at Lowell, Massachusetts, 
and she has drawn a picture of New England in the middle of 
the century as she knew it, scarcely to be found in any other 
book. The narrative is a delightful bit of autobiography, and 
has a charm both poetic and personal. 
6 



Pilgrim's Progress, The. By John Bunyan. In pre- 
paration. 

Polly Oliver's Problem. By Kate Douglas Wiggin, 
With Introductory Sketch and Portrait. 212 pp., 60 
cents. 

A story for girls, showing how a girl in straitened circum- 
stances bravely worked out the problem of self-support. 

Rab and his Friends ; and Other Dogs and Men. By 
Dr. John Brown. With an Outline Sketch of Dr. 
Brown, and a Portrait. 299 pp., 60 cents. 
The touching story of Rab and his Friends has introduced 
many readers to the beautiful character of Dr. John Brown, 
the Edinburgh physician who wrote the tale, and in this vol- 
ume are gathered a number of Dr. Brown's sketches and tales, 
including Marjorie Fleming, and several bright narratives of 
dogs. 

Robinson Crusoe. By Daniel Defoe. With an In- 
troductory Sketch and Portrait of the author, a Map, 
and explanatory Notes. 409 pp., 60 cents. 
The first part of Robinson Crusoe is here given entire, and 
this is the part which the world knows as Robinson Crusoe. 
In the introductory sketch, the editor, besides giving an ac- 
count of Defoe's career, shows the reason why this book has 
been received by readers old and young as a work of genius, 
when almost the whole of the great mass of Defoe's writing 
has been forgotten. A map enables one to trace Robinson 
Crusoe's imaginary voyagings and to place the island near the 
disputed boundary of Venezuela. 

Shakespeare, Tales from. By Charles and Mary 
Lamb. With an Introductory Sketch and Portraits of 
the authors. 324 pp., 60 cents. 

There is a story behind every great play, and it is only after 
one has got at the story that one thoroughly understands and 
enjoys the play. Charles and Mary Lamb were themselves 
delightful writers, and to read their Tales from Shakespeare 
is not only to have a capital introduction to the great drama- 
tist's works, but to hear fine stories finely told. This volume 
contains, besides, an account of the brother and sister, whose 
life together is one of the most touching tales in English Lit- 
erature. 

7 



Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and As You Like It. 

With Introductions and Notes. 224 pp., 50 cents. 

The text followed is that of the eminent Shakespearian 
scholar, Richard Grant White, whose notes, always to the 
point, have also been used and added to. 
Silas Marner : the Weaver of Raveloe. By George 

Eliot. With an Introduction and a Portrait. 251 pp., 

50 cents. 

Silas Marner is one of the most perfect novels on a small 
scale in the English language, and its charm resides both in 
its stj'le and its fine development of character. The introduc- 
tion treats of the life and career of George Eliot, and the place 
she occupies in English Literature. 
Sketch Book, Essays from the. By Washington 

Irving. With Biographical Sketch and Chronological 

Table of the Period covered by living's Life, Portrait, 

Picture of Westminster Abbey, Introduction, and Notes. 

212 pp., 50 cents. 

In a nearly equal division, the most interesting American 
and Eastern sketches from Irving's Sketch Book are grouped 
in this volume, including Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of 
Sleepy Hollow, Rural Life in England, Christmas Day, and 
Westminster Abbey. 
Snow-Bound, The Tent on the Beach and Other 

Poems. By John Greenleaf Whittier. With Bio- 
graphical Sketch, Notes, Portrait, and Illustrations. 

250 pp., 60 cents. 

This volume contains those poems which have made Whit- 
tier a great household poet, as well as a few of those stirring 
lyrics which recall his strong voice for freedom. 
Stories and Poems for Children. By Celia Thax- 

ter. With Biographical Sketch and Portrait. 272 

pp., 60 cents. 

Mrs. Thaxter's girlhood in her isolated home on the Isles of 
Shoals and her life there on her return in maturity gave her mate- 
rial which she used with power and beauty in her verse and prose. 
Stories from Old English Poetry. By Abuy Sage 

Richardson. With frontispiece. 292 pp., 60 cents. 

A group of stories after the manner of Lamb's Tales from 
Shakespeare, drawn from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and 



some of the lesser poets, not now generally read ; stories of 

great beauty in themselves, and illuminated by the genius of 

the poets who used them. 

Story of a Bad Boy, The. By Thomas Bailey 
Aldrich. With Biographical Sketch, Portrait, and 
many Illustrations. i2mo. 265 pp., 70 cents. 
A humorous and graphic story of the adventures of a hearty 

American boy living in an old seaport town. The book has been. 

a great favorite with a generation of boys. 

Tales of a Wayside Inn. By Henry Wadsworth 
Longfellow. With Introduction, Notes, and Illus- 
trations. 274 pp., 60 cents. 

In the Introduction the reader is told who were the friends 
of the poet who served as models for the several story-tellers 
that gathered about Howe's tavern in Sudbury. The tales 
include such famous stories as Paul Revere's Ride, Lady 
Wentworth. and The Birds of Kilhngworth. 

Tales of New England. By Sarah Orne Jewett. 

With Portrait and Biographical Sketch of the author. 

276 pp., 60 cents. 

Eight of the stories Avhich show Miss Jewett as the sympa- 
thetic narrator of homely New England country life. The 
stories are Miss Tempy's Watchers; The Dulham Ladies; An 
Only Son ; Marsh Rosemary ; A White Heron ; Law Lane ; 
A Lost Lover; The Courting of Sister Wisby. 

yom Brown's School Days. By Thomas Hughes. 

With an Introductory Sketch, two Portraits, and six 

other Illustrations. 390 pp., 60 cents. 

Tom Brown at Rugby is the popular name by which this 
book is known. It is perhaps the best read story of school- 
boy life in the English language. Rugby was the English 
school presided over by Dr. Thomas Arnold, and a portrait of 
Arnold is given. The introductory sketch gives an account of 
Arnold and Rugby, of Thomas Hughes, the " Old Boy " who 
wrote the book, and mentions Frederic Denison Maurice, who 
had a great influence over Hughes. The volume contains por- 
traits of Hughes and Dr. Arnold. 

Two Years Before the Mast. By Richard Henry 
Dana, Jr. With Biographical Sketch and Portrait. 
i2mo. 480 pp.. 70 cents. 
9 



As a frontispiece to this book tliere is a portrait of the au- 
thor when he took his famous voyage just after leaving college. 
But great as Dana vi^as as a lawyer, orator and statesman, he 
lives chiefly in the memory of men as the narrator of a voyage 
round Cape Horn to San Francisco before the discovery of 
gold. The days of such exploits seem gone by, but this book 
remains as a literary record and will always . be thus re- 
membered. 
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Life among the Lowly. By 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. With Introductory chapter 

on Mrs. Stowe and her career, and Portrait. 12 mo. 

518 pp., 70 cents. 

The most celebrated American book, and one of the world's 
great books. The introductory chapter gives a sketch of Mrs. 
Stowe's life, and some account of a book which has had a won- 
derful history. It has well been called not a book only but a 
great deed. 
Vicar of Wakefield, The. By Oliver Goldsmith. 

With Introduction, Notes, Portraits, and Illustrations. 

232 pp., 50 cents. 

So celebrated is this book as a piece of English that German 
boys, when set to studying the English language, are early 
given this tale. It is Goldsmith's one story, and has outlived 
a vast number of novels written in his day. 
Vision of Sir Launfal, The, and Other Verse and 

Prose. By James Russell Lowell. With Biographi- 
cal Sketch, Portrait, and other Illustrations. 262 pp^ 

60 cents. 

The volume contains, l^esides the famous Sir Launfal, the 
great odes called out by the war for the Union and by the cen- 
tennial observance of 1875, an example of the Biglow Papers, 
the poem on Agassiz, The Courtin', and a number of the well- 
known shorter lyrics. The last third of the book is occupied 
with four of the literary essays which divide the honors with 
Lowell's poetry, Books and Libraries, Emerson the Lecturer, 
Keats, and Don Quixote. 
War of Independence, The. By John Fiske. With 

Biographical Sketch, Portrait of the author, and four 

Maps. 214 pp., 60 cents. 

Dr. John Fiske is the most eminent of living American 
historians. His large histories are read eagerly, as he adds 
10 



volume to volume, and in time it is hoped that he will cover 
the whole course of American history. This small book con- 
tains in a nutshell the meat of a great book. It is a clear 
narrative, and what is quite as important it gives the why and 
wherefore of the revolution, and explains how one event led to 
another. It contains also suggestions for collateral reading 
and a biographical sketch which gives some notion of the 
author's training as a scholar and author. 
Washington, George. An Historical Biography, By 

Horace E. Scudder. With four Illustrations. 253 pp., 

60 cents. 

Within a brief compass Mr. Scudder has attempted to give 
the narrative of Washington's life, and to show that he was a 
living, breathing man, and not, as some seem to think him, a 
marble statue. He calls his book an historical biography be- 
cause he has tried to show the figure in its relation to the great 
events of American history in which it was set. 
Wonder-Book, The, and Tanglewood Tales. For 

Girls and Boys. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. With 

Biographical Sketch, and Frontispiece by Walter 

Crane. 12 mo, 421 pp., 70 cents. 

The old Greek myths told over again by the greatest of 
American romancers. Here are the stories such as The 
Gorgon's Head, The Argonauts, the Dragon's Teeth, Midas, 
The Three Golden Apples, which in allusion or reference con- 
stantly meet the reader of literature. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

4 Park St., Boston; 11 East 17th St., New York; 
158 Adams St., Chicago. 



A Companion Volume to the Masterpieces of American 
Literature, 

0imtxpitcz^ of 'Br(tt0]^ JLtterature* 

12mo, 480 pages, $1.00, ?iet, postpaid. 
With a portrait of each author. 

EusKiN : Biographical Sketch ; The King of the Golden River. 

Macaulay: Biographical Sketch; Horatius. 

Dk. John Brown: Biographical Sketch; Rab and his Friends; Ou? 
Dogs. 

Tennyson: Biographical Sketch; Enoch Arden ; The Charge of the 
Light Brigade ; The Death of the Old Year ; Crossing the Bar. 

Dickens: Biographical Sketch; The Seven Poor Travellers. 

Wordsworth : Biographical Sketch; We are Seven; The Pet Lamb, 
The Reverie of Poor Susan; To a Skylark; To the Cuckoo; She was a 
Phantom of Delight; Three Years she'Grevv^ ; She Dwelt among the Un- 
trodden Ways; Daffodils; To the Daisy; Yarrow Unvisited; Stepping 
Westward; Sonnet, composed upon Westminster Bridge; To Sleep; It is 
a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free; Extempore Effusion upon the Death 
of James Hogg; Resolution and Independence. 

Burns: Biographical Sketch; The Cotter's Saturday Night; To a 
Mouse; To a Mount£.;n Daisy; A Bard's Epitaph; Songs: For A' That and 
A' That; Auld Lang Syne; Mj'- Father was a Farmer; John Anderson; 
Flow Gently, Sv/eet Afton; Highland Mary ; To Mary in Heaven ; I Love 
my Jean; Oh, Wert Thou in the Caulu Blast; A Red, Red Rose; Mary 
Morison; Wandering Willie; My Nannie's Awa'; Bonnie Doon; My 
Heart's in the Highlands. 

Lamb: Biographical Sketch; Essays of Elia: Dream Children, A Rev- 
erie; A Dissertation upon Roast Pig; Barbara S ; Old China. 

Coleridge: Biographical Sketch; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; 
Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream. 

Byron: Biographical Sketch; The Prisoner of Chillon; Sonnet; Fare 
Thee Well; She Walks in Beautj^; The Destruction of Sennacherib. 

Cowper: Biographical Sketch; The Diverting History of John Gilpin; 
On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture ; On tiie Loss of the Royal George; 
Verses supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk; Epitaph'on a Hare; 
The Treatment of his Hares. 

Gray: Biographical Sketch; Elegy, written in a Country' Churchyard; 
On a Distant Prospect of Eton College. 

Goldsmith: Biographical Sketch; The Deserted Village. 

Sir Roger de Coverley Papers : Introduction ; The Spectator's 
Account of Himself; Tiie Club; Sir Roger at his Country House; The 
Coverley Household ; Will Wimble ; Death of Sir Roger de Coverley. 

Milton: Biographical Sketch ; L' Allegro ; II Penseroso ; Lycidas. 

Bacon: Biographical Sketch; Bacon's Essays: Of Travel; of Studies; 
of Suspicion; of Negotiating; of Masques and Triumphs. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 

4 Park Street, Boston; 11 East 17th Street, New Yobk^ 
1.58 Adams Street, Chicago. 



ADDITIONAL INEXPENSIVE BOOKS 

ESPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR 

LIBRARY USE 

ALL ARE STRONGLY BOUND IN CLOTH. 



WITHOUT NOTES: 

MODERN CLASSICS. A Library of complete Essays, 
Tales, and Poems from the works of American, British, 
and Continental writers. 34 volumes, averaging 310 
pages, $13.60. Each volume, 32mo, 40 cents, net. 

"An unrivaled list of excellent works." — Dr. William T. Har- 
ris, U. S. Commissioner of Education. 

WITH BRIEF NOTES: 

51 Bound Volumes of the RIVERSIDE LITERATURE 
SERIES, at prices ranging from 25 cents to 60 cents. 

American Poems, American Prose, Masterpieces of Amer- 
ican Literature, Masterpieces of British Literature, 
Fiske's History of the United States for Schools, 
Fiske's Civil Government in the United States. Each 
$1.00, net. 

WITH FULL NOTES: 

ROLFE'S STUDENTS' SERIES OF STANDARD 
ENGLISH POEMS for Schools and Colleges. Edited 
by W. J. RoLFE, Litt. D., and containing complete poems 
by Scott, Tennyson, Byron, and Morris. With a 
carefully revised text, copious explanatory and critical 
notes, and numerous illustrations. 1 1 volumes, square 
i6mo. Price per volume, 75 cents. To teachers, by 
mail, 53 cents, net. 

Full descriptive circulars of the books mentioned above will be sent to 
any address on application. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

4 Park Street, Boston; 11 East 17th Street, New York; 
158 Adams Street, Chicago. 



^ ^ c 
A Condensed List of the Riverside School Library 



Descriptions of these fifty books will be found in the preceding pages 

Cents. 

Aldrich. The Story of a Bad Boy 70 

Andersen. Stories 50 

Arabian Nights, Tales from the.* 50 

Bacon. A Japanese I nterior 60 

Brown, John. Rab and his Friends ; and Other Dogs and Men 60 

Bunyan. The Pilgrim's Progress.* 60 

Burroughs. Birds and Bees, and Other Studies in Nature 60 

Cooper. The Last of the Mohicans 70 

Dana. Two Years Before the Mast 70 

Defoe. Robinson Crusoe 60 

Dickens. A Christmas Carol, and The Cricket on the Hearth 50 

Eliot, George. Silas Marner 50 

Emerson. Essays and Poems.* 50 

Fiske. The War of Independence 60 

Franklin. Autobiography 50 

Goldsmith. The Vicar of Wakefield 50 

Griffis. Brave Little Holland 60 

Grimm. German Household Tales.* 50 

Hawthorne. Grandfather's Chair, or, True Stories from New England History; 

and Biographical Stories 60 

" The House of the Seven Gables 70 

" The Wonder-Book, and Tanglewood Tales 70 

Holmes. The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table 60 

" Grandmother's Story, and Other Verse and Prose 50 

Hughes. Tom Brown's School Days 60 

Irving. Essays from the Sketch Book 50 

Jewett, Sarah Orne. Tales of New England 60 

Lamb. Tales from Shakespeare 60 

Larcom, Lucy. A New England Girlhood 60 

Longfellow. The Children's Hour, and Other Poems 60 

" Evangeline, Hiawatha, and The Courtship of Miles Standish 60 

" Tales of a Wayside Inn ., 60 

Lowell. The Vision of Sir Launfal, and Other Verse and Prose ' 60 

Miller, Olive Thorpe. Bird- Ways 60 

Milton. Minor Poems, and Books I. -III. of Paradise Lost 50 

Parton. Captains of Industry, First Series 60 

" Captains of Industry, Second Series 60 

Richardson, Abby Sage. Stories from Old English Poetry 60 

Scott. Ivanhoe 70 

" The Lady of the Lake 60 

Scudder. Fables and Folk Stories 50 

" George Washington 60 

Shakespeare. Julius Ca'^ar, and As You Like It 50 

Stowe. LTncle Tom's Cabin 70 

Swift. Gulliver's Voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag 50 

Tennyson. Enoch Arden, The Coming of Arthur, and Other Poems 50 

Thaxter, Celia. Stories and Poems for Children 60 

Warner. Being a Boy 60 

■Whittier. Selections from Child Life in Poetry and Prose 50 

" Snow-Bnund, The Tent on the Beach, and Other Poems 60 

■Wiggin, Kate Douglas. Polly Oliver's Problem 60 

* The books marked with a star are in preparation for speedy isstie. 
The others are now ready. {October i, i8qb.) 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
Boston, New York, Chicago 



